How do you solve a problem like Europa? The icy moon of Jupiter is thought to host a vast ocean beneath its frozen crust, making it an ideal target to look for life beyond Earth. But the tiny world also has a perfect storm of problems – a poorly mapped surface, a space environment full of powerful radiation, geysers that may or may not exist – that make designing such a mission tricky.
Last week, more than 200 scientists and engineers met at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, to chart a course for detecting life in Europa's seas. This isn't mere wishful thinking: NASA's 2016 budget gave a dedicated mission to the icy moon the green light, with a launch date for the probe by the mid-2020s.
"We're going to do a Europa mission," NASA science administrator John Grunsfeld told the meeting. "If there's something trapped in that water, and we potentially have the opportunity to see it, it could be transformative."
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