The Decadal Survey deemed a mission to Europa as an extremely high priority for scientific pursuits by NASA. It lists five key science objectives that are necessary to improve our understanding of this potentially habitable moon. Primarily, the mission will need to: -Characterize the extent of the ocean and its relation to the deeper interior -Characterize the ice shell and any subsurface water, including their heterogeneity, and the nature of surface-ice-ocean exchange -Determine global surface, compositions and chemistry, especially as related to habitability -Understand the formation of surface features, including sites of recent or current activity, identify and characterize candidate sites for future detailed exploration -Understand Europas space environment and interaction with the magnetosphere And most of all, run if it finds a black monolith.
Posted on: Tue, 06 May 2014 20:08:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015