Jupiter Exploration: High Risk and High Rewards

Details Jupiter Exploration: High Risk and High Rewards Jupiter Exploration: High Risk and High Rewards

Dec 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004eostr..85..544k&link_type=abstract

Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Volume 85, Issue 50, p. 544-544

Mathematics

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Planetology: Solar System Objects: Jovian Satellites, Planetology: Solar System Objects: Jupiter, Planetology: Solar System Objects: General Or Miscellaneous

Scientific paper

Jupiter exploration is big science, and only the United States can afford self-contained missions to the gas giant and its four planet-sized moons. The Galileo spacecraft, which was recently flown into Jupiter to prevent it from contaminating Europa's ocean, cost $1.6 billion. Despite the failure of its High Gain Antenna (HGA), Galileo discovered briny, subsurface oceans on Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto; globally mapped all four Galilean moons; monitored Io's volcanic activity; carried out a 7-year study of the Jovian magnetosphere; and dropped an atmospheric probe into Jupiter's upper cloud layer. Of these achievements, the most significant is the indirect detection of a deep subsurface liquid-water layer on Europa [Pappalardo et al., 1999; Kivelson et al., 2000]. The case for a Europan ecosystem can be made [e.g., Marion et al., 2004], although it is important to remember the energetic and biogeochemical limits on putative Europan life [e.g., Soare et al., 2002]. Europa's low moment of inertia (0.346 +/- 0.005 MR2) suggests a silicate mantle below the ocean, permitting chemical exchanges between ocean and silicates, as occurs on Earth. Europa's surface is geologically young, likely emplaced 20-180 million years ago. Any recycling of surficial icy crust into the ocean could add oxygen, sulfur, and organic compounds, either impact-delivered or generated in situ by UV irradiation and the implantation of ionized particles from Jupiter's radiation belts.

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