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NASA calls on the public to send their names on its Europa Clipper mission by Paul Hill Every now and again, NASA gets ready to launch a major mission into space and sometimes offers the public a chance to get their name sent into space. The organization has opened up another opportunity such as this. You now have the opportunity to send your name on NASA's upcoming Europa Clipper mission, which is set to land on Jupiter's second Galilean moon, Europa, in 2030. People’s names will accompany a poem called “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón. They will be stencilled onto a microchip and head off on the journey in October 2024. If you’re interested in including your name, you must add it to NASA’s website by December 31. Since the programme was announced on the evening of June 1, 2,767 people have added their names. The majority of these submissions are from the United States but names from all the continents have started coming in too. Within the United States, most signatures have come from California, Texas, Florida, and New York. "'Message in a Bottle' is the perfect convergence of science, art, and technology, and we are excited to share with the world the opportunity to be a part of Europa Clipper's journey," said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "I just love the thought that our names will be travelling across our solar system aboard the radiation-tolerant spacecraft that seeks to unlock the secrets of Jupiter's frozen moon." As mentioned, NASA has held similar programmes for its Artemis I mission to the moon and for several missions to Mars. While anyone is free to add their name, NASA will definitely be hoping that it piques the interest of children who may be more interested to pursue a job in the sciences as a result. In addition to adding your name, the website provides a world map that displays the locations where signatures are being added from. You can also find a live feed of the Clipper clean room to see work going on.

Ariane 5 successfully launches European Space Agency's JUICE mission to the Jovian system by Paul Hill The European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed the successful launch of an Ariane 5 rocket carrying the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE). JUICE tried to launch on Thursday but bad weather delayed it until Friday. The spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter in July 2031 and do its work in the Jovian system until September 2035. The journey to Jupiter is a little bit complex and includes several gravity assists, here’s how it will go. In August, JUICE will perform a Lunar-Earth flyby and head off towards Venus. A year later, it will perform a flyby of Venus before heading back towards Earth for a flyby in September 2026. Three years later, in January 2029, it will perform another flyby of Earth and head for Jupiter. It will arrive at Jupiter in July 2031 and until November 2034 will perform a tour of the Jovian system doing 35 icy moon flybys. Finally, from December 2034 to September 2035, it will enter orbit around Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede. JUICE will use remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to learn more about its destinations. It will learn about Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation, and plasma environment and its interactions with its moons. Hopefully, we’ll learn if there are signs of life in the region and get great pictures back.

TWIRL 109: European Space Agency to send JUICE to Jupiter and its moons by Paul Hill There’s not too much going on this week in terms of rocket launches but of most interest is the launch of the JUICE spacecraft which is heading to the Jovian system to explore the gas giant Jupiter and three of its icy moons; Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. Wednesday, April 12 The first launch of the week will be a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying several smallsats as part of the Transporter-7 rideshare mission. The satellites will be placed in a Sun-synchronous orbit and will perform a whole host of missions of their own. This mission will take off at 6:45 a.m. UTC from Vandenberg AFB in California. It should be available on the SpaceX website to live stream. Thursday, April 13 The final launch of the week, and most exciting, is the launch of Arianespace’s Ariane 5 ECA+ rocket. The launch itself is not what’s special, but the payload. It will be launching the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft which will be heading off to investigate Jupiter and three of its moons; Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa – all of which have oceans that could contain life. After the launch, which is due at 12:15 p.m. UTC from French Guyana, we’ll have to wait until July 2031 until the craft reaches our closest gas giant. If you want to watch, tune into ESA Web TV at the time of launch. Recap The first launch last week was a Falcon 9 carrying the Tranche 0 mission for the Space Development Agency (SDA). The satellites will be used for communications, data, and missile warnings. Next, we saw the maiden flight of the Space Pioneer’s Tianlong-2. It carried the Love Space Science remote-sensing satellite into a Solar-synchronous orbit. Next up was another Falcon 9, this time carrying the Intelsat IS-40e satellite with NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions Monitoring of Pollution instrument aboard. Below is a video of the satellite’s deployment. The final launch was that of iSpace’s Hyperbola-1 rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. The launch was done to test measures taken after a prior failed launch. That’s all for this week, check in next time!

SpaceX to fly NASA's reconnaissance mission to Jovian moon Europa by Chandrakant Isi Elon Musk's SpaceX has bagged another contract from NASA. The private space exploration company has been awarded approximately $178 million to fly the upcoming Europa Clipper mission on its Falcon Heavy rocket. That's significantly cost effective compared to NASA's in-house Space Launch System (SLS) that burns around $2 billion per launch. The Europa Clipper mission is expected to take off in 2024 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Europa is one of the most fascinating heavenly bodies in our solar system. The Jovian moon has been on the radar of astronomers due to the vast ocean underneath its icy shell. It is one of the most likely places in our solar system to harbor life as we know it. Hence, NASA has been planning the Europa Clipper mission to closely study this Jovian moon and scout for possible landing sites for future lander missions. NASA has selected Falcon Heavy to fly Europa Clipper! Launching in October 2024, this interplanetary mission will study whether Jupiter's icy moon Europa could have conditions suitable for life. https://t.co/KJt7Natn7i pic.twitter.com/sfcdrcKE77 — SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 23, 2021 The Europa Clipper spacecraft will be equipped with several instruments to study if this icy moon harbors conditions suitable for life. The reconnaissance mission will focus on capturing high-resolution images of Europa's surface and detect signs of geological activity. The onboard spectrography sensors will try to determine the moon's composition. NASA also hopes to measure the thickness of Europa's icy shell and the depth and salinity of the sub-surface ocean. Based on current data, Europa's ice shell probably has a depth of 10 to 15 miles. Below that lies an ocean with depths of whopping 40 to 100 miles. To put things in perspective, although Europa's diameter is only one-fourth to that of Earth, it may hold twice as much water compared to our home planet. In addition to this latest contract, SpaceX recently won a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to build a lunar lander. However, it has been put on hold after Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office (GOA) over NASA's favorable treatment to SpaceX among other things.

SETI scientist lists seven places microbial life could be found in space by Paul Hill If you go back around a hundred years in time you’ll find that speculation about extraterrestrial life was rampant, much like today. However, in 2017, our expectations of finding life in the solar system are much more measured than they were for our ancestors. No more theories of lakes on Mars dug by the Martian race or Dinosaurs walking on a balmy Venus. Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, which is currently on the lookout for alien signals coming from the depths of space, has run through the most likely places we will find simple microbial life in our solar system; the list includes places we’re already exploring but also other places we’ve only taken photos of, on flyby missions. First on the list, is Mars. The red planet is the most extensively searched place that features on the list, we’ve sent crafts to orbit the planet, we’ve landed rovers to learn more about the terrain of the planet and now we are preparing to land people on the surface. Shostak believes there could be life forms hidden under the dusty surface of Mars, about 30 meters down or below, where some liquid water may also be present. Next up we have three of the four Galilean moons that orbit around Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. Io is a fiery volcano planet so it’s not considered to be particularly hospitable to life, however, the remaining three, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede have potential. According to Shostak, Europa’s subsurface oceans could host life which might survive using the hotspots at the bottom of the oceans which are like “little mini volcanoes and that would give you energy for life.” Both Ganymede and Callisto also host oceans but Europa remains the most likely place for life. The next location is Saturn, where two of its moons, Titan and Enceladus, could potentially harbor life. Although less well known than Europa, Enceladus is one of the most likely places where life could be found and it turns out that it’s not so hard to find out either. Shostak said “it’s shooting geysers into space. So you don’t have to land. You don’t have to drill. You just go grab some of [that] geyser gunk and bring it back to Earth and maybe you’ll find aliens.” Titan, on the other hand, has liquid lakes of natural gas, so it could also sustain life. The final candidate that Shostak put forward was Pluto. We’ve only just got decent pictures of the dwarf planet thanks to a flyby. Shostak hypothesizes that there are pockets of liquid water underneath the surface of Pluto which means it could also host microbial life. When asked whether we’ll find extraterrestrial intelligent life, Shostak replied that it might be found in the next two decades. “There’s a lot of real estate out there, right? There are a trillion planets in the Milky Way. We can see a trillion other galaxies, each with a trillion planets. If they’re not out there, then all these people behind us are really special.” It may seem impossible to discover extraterrestrial intelligent life in the next 20 years, but considering the leaps that human technology has made over just the past two decades, it could be possible, or perhaps it's just a hopeful bias. Source: Futurism | Image via 3D Print