Very sad that "Due to a shift in priorities at NASA that favored manned space missions, the project lost funding in 2005, effectively cancelling the JIMO mission."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Orbiter

^ Yea, but I'm just glad someone is looking beyond the red desert at other possibilities. Even if they're still decades away.

Hopefully decades from now an alternative to nuclear power can be utilised. The notion of sending out a reactor (with the damage it could do) to another planet that potentially has life, doesn't sit right with me.

I don't see the problem with a nuclear power plant. It's designed so that there's not too much fall-out if the rocket would fail during launch.
And about contaminating another planet. You should know that the Jupiter system already has an extraordinarily intense radiation due to the strong magnetic field. Furthermore a reactor might help in heating and sterilizing the probe to remove any Earth life, which might be a far bigger threat to the alien life if it's there.

Someone should just convince Chuck Norris to do it.

>> ^cybrbeast:
I don't see the problem with a nuclear power plant. It's designed so that there's not too much fall-out if the rocket would fail during launch.
And about contaminating another planet. You should know that the Jupiter system already has an extraordinarily intense radiation due to the strong magnetic field. Furthermore a reactor might help in heating and sterilizing the probe to remove any Earth life, which might be a far bigger threat to the alien life if it's there.


Hmmn good point regarding Jupiter's radiation belt, but there must still be balance which could potentially be disrupted. And I'd think the Thermosphere would do a decent job of burning up and sterilising that earth junk no?

No, Europa has a negligible atmosphere, so there won't be a re-entry burn. Sterilizing the probe will be one of the biggest challenges. (Earth) life is very hardy and has traveled with Apollo to the Moon and back (on the outside of the craft).
I also very much doubt a probe, even if it leaks, would damage the environment much, only very locally. Europa should have a vast ocean and Uranium doesn't dissolve that quickly. The oceans of Europa might contain some uranium already, just like Earth's ocean at 3 parts per billion (or 10^13 kg (2 × 10^13 lb) total). That's 10 with 13 zeroes.

^ Yes, but it's the local effect that might be problematic, isn't it? Let's assume we find some aliens there. Maybe it never occurred to them that there might be something above that massive layer of ice they call "sky". All of a sudden, something huge drills near one of their vacation spots, and starts releasing toxic materials into the water. That's something you would want to avoid in your first-encounter scenario, no?

On the pollution side, we're still debating whether or not our own massive industrial machine is capable of making a dent in our own planet's environment, so what's one tiny probe on a moon like Europa?

One question: How does the autonomous sub send the fantastic images back to earth? Can't use radio through miles of ice. They would need to bring a BIG roll of wire, with a lot of redundancy, since they don't know how thick the sheet is.

...Or maybe the meltprobe could have a floatation device, and melt its way back up. Not sure it could make it all the way though, since liquid water would need some ice above it to form.

demon, it seems unlikely that there will be complex bigger lifeforms. That is because at least on Earth oxygen respiration is required to sustain energetic multicellular creatures. No sunlight reaches the depth of Europa so oxygen generating photosynthesis is unlikely. So if we only harm a small place in, the worst case scenario of a leak or meltdown, then I don't think it would matter that much on a planetary scale. However leaving the reactor in the water will doubtlessly cause it to leak after decades or centuries. Maybe they could drive the meltprobe back up a bit after the mission is done. If it then locks into the ice it should remain so.

Crake for communication a wire would bring problems as you say. What they could do, is drop radio beacons at certain distances along the way down which could then relay the signal back up the surface. Or maybe use really longwave radio signals which might be able to penetrate the ice, though could only carry very low bandwidth.

^Crake: Sub sends signal to the "nuclear torpedo", which is connected by wire to the surface landing module, which relays the signal to the orbiting craft, which uses the powerful antenna array to send it to Earth. Complex and one-way communication, but nothing NASA hasn't attempted to solve before. Unless they send it in metric...

^cybrbeast: I'm aware of the Drake Equation and it's implications on finding life within our own solar system. But when we're going specifically into places where we expect life to be possible, it's best to be too cautious than to assume there's nothing there, imo.
As for the likelihood of life under all that ice with no sunlight: If you watch the entire film, you see that they are in fact following a team of ocean explorers which take subs to the deepest parts man can survive in, in order to find new life, new species and understand how life survives there at all.
Europa is believed to have a molten core (which is the reason there's an ocean there at all, presumably), and is not just a big slab of ice. If that's the case, there might be Thermal Vents there, which allow life to exist on Earth in environments previously thought to be impossible.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, let's go on a mission to see if there's life on Europa, while actually preparing to find said life, and not just doing it to mark a checkbox and say "Europa? Meh, been there, done that, got the T-Shirt".

demon, you did not understand me correctly. I think microbial life could be quite likely, though not complex multicellular life. I know the black smoker communities rely on bacteria that perform chemosynthesis. But this doesn't produce oxygen. The bigger life around the black smokers still uses oxygen provided by photosynthesis elsewhere.
Also a cable does not seem practical for communication. The ice may be more than a 100km thick. If the cable was only 1cm thick, which is quite thin for something in usch an extreme environment, you would already need 8m3 storage space, just for cable. That quickly becomes impractical.

^I think they can do better than 1cm though, but it is impractical no matter what... the ice re-freezes around the cable, I would imagine, not to mention other weird forces (massive EM outbursts from Jupiter would probably get picked up by the upper part of the wire and disturb the signal/burn the circuitry, for instance).

And ULF-radio takes a lot of juice. Presumably the nuclear torpedo has an RTG at most.

Wire is the way to go, i think (and it seems there's a thin one in the video, although that may be my imagination).

Wire... or monoliths.

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