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Icy Moons of Our Solar System That May Have Oceans Now | NASA/JPL FriendsofNASA.org | Full-size image: https://lnkd.in/ggck7536 Scientists think six icy moons in our solar system may currently host oceans of liquid water beneath their outer surfaces. Arranged around Earth are images from NASA spacecraft of, clockwise from the top, Saturn's moon Enceladus, Jupiter's moons Callisto and Ganymede, Neptune's moon Triton, Saturn's moon Titan, and Jupiter's moon Europa, the target of NASA's Europa Clipper mission. The worlds here are shown to scale. The images of the Saturnian moons were taken by NASA's Cassini mission. The images of the Jovian moons were taken by NASA's Galileo mission. The image of Triton was taken by NASA's Voyager 2 mission. The image of Earth was stitched together using months of satellite-based observations, mostly using data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite. Beyond Earth, Jupiter’s moon Europa is considered one of the solar system’s most promising potentially habitable environments. After an approximately 1.8-billion-mile journey, Europa Clipper will enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030, where the spacecraft will conduct a detailed survey of Europa to determine whether the icy world could have conditions suitable for life. Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission. It carries a suite of nine instruments along with a gravity experiment that will investigate an ocean beneath Europa’s surface that scientists believe contains twice as much liquid water as Earth’s oceans. Europa Clipper's science instruments include cameras, spectrometers, a magnetometer, and an ice-penetrating radar. These instruments will study Europa’s icy shell, the ocean beneath, and the composition of the gases in the moon’s atmosphere and surface geology, and provide insights into the moon’s potential habitability. The spacecraft also will carry a thermal instrument to pinpoint locations of warmer ice and any possible eruptions of water vapor. Europa Clipper Mission website: https://europa.nasa.gov/ 'Dreaming of Europa' Posters and Wallpaper (phone and desktop) Full-size downloads: https://lnkd.in/gRvWnpq6 Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/University of Arizona/DLR Release Date: Oct. 11, 2024 #NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #EuropaClipper #EuropaClipperSpacecraft #Jupiter #Europa #Moon #OceanWorlds #Astrobiology #Biosignatures #Habitability #SolarSystem #SpaceExploration #JPL #Caltech #UArizona #UnitedStates #DLR #Germany #Infographic #STEM #Education

Folks, it’s happening. NASA announced its unprecedented Dragonfly mission — which will fly a car-sized craft with eight spinning rotors around Saturn’s moon Titan — is confirmed for flight. The mission, in advanced stages of its design and fabrication, has an approved budget, ride (a heavy-lift rocket), and launch date in 2028. “Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission,” Nicky Fox, who heads the space agency’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement. “Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth.” SEE ALSO: NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills. Titan, located some 880 million miles beyond Earth, is a fascinating world. Larger than our moon, it’s the only moon in our solar system that harbors a thick atmosphere and bodies of surface liquid — though the sprawling seas on Titan are composed of liquid methane, not water. Meanwhile, Titan’s icy dunes are teeming with the organic ingredients needed for life (as we know it) to develop. That’s where Dragonfly will repeatedly land, take off, and explore over some three to five years. It’s a realm of great scientific intrigue because the pristine surface hosts the ancient, “prebiotic” conditions that could have provided the brew for life to eventually form in our solar system. It’s like a primordial Earth. Mashable Light Speed “This really is the only place in the solar system that has this kind of chemistry,” Elizabeth “Zibi” Turtle, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the principal investigator of the mission, told Mashable in 2023. This image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows the sun reflecting off Titan’s northern methane seas. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. Arizona / Univ. Idaho A conception of Dragonfly zooming above Titan’s dunes. Credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben What’s more, while the nuclear-powered spacecraft identifies what organic molecules are on Titan, and how they formed, the mission can also address whether it’s a habitable world (meaning whether it could host living organisms) and look for potential signatures of life. The deep space mission, like many such endeavors, saw ballooning costs that resulted in budget problems and delays. The now $3.35-billion spaceflight (total including operations) was beset by “additional costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain increases, and the results of an in-depth design iteration,” NASA explained. But now the cosmic deal is sealed. After a six-year journey, the Saturn-bound craft is expected to land on Titan in a decade, in 2034. With the moon’s low-gravity and thick atmosphere — which make it easy to generate lift — the buzzing craft will take flight to disparate locations on this frigid world. var

Quest for Life in Jupiter's Icy Moon: NASA's Europa Clipper Prepares for Launch   The upcoming Europa Clipper mission, with a planned launch of October 6, 2024, represents the culmination of decades of scientific interest and exploration of Jupiter's icy moon. Europa first captured researchers' attention during the Voyager and Galileo missions, which revealed intriguing features suggesting the presence of a subsurface ocean.   Scientists noticed that Europa's surface patterns didn't match predictions for a completely frozen world. Instead, they indicated the possibility of a mobile crust, potentially floating on a liquid layer. This hypothesis was further supported by studies of tidal heating, suggesting Europa might harbor a global subsurface ocean.   The Galileo mission, launched in 1989, provided unprecedented close-up observations of Europa. One of Galileo's most significant findings was the detection of a magnetic field induced by Jupiter's own field, strongly implying the presence of a conductive fluid layer – most likely a salty ocean – beneath Europa's icy shell.   The Europa Clipper will be NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration's largest spacecraft ever sent to another planetary system, primarily due to its expansive solar panel array. Spanning 30 m (100 feet) when the solar panels are deployed. The main body of the spacecraft is 5m (16 feet) tall without the solar panels, with a ‘dry mass’  (that is, its mass not including fuel) of 3,241 kg (7,145 pounds). To shield its sensitive electronics from Jupiter's intense radiation, the Clipper employs an armored "vault" with 0.3-inch-thick aluminum walls, a design similar to that used on NASA's Juno spacecraft. The Juno spacecraft, entered orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016 and its original mission was extended to 2025 with a potential data collection from Europa. https://lnkd.in/deuYn39x   Europa Clipper mission will measure Europa's tidal flexing, which could definitively prove the existence of a subsurface ocean. It will also analyze the composition of the reddish surface material, potentially providing insights into the ocean's chemistry and any cycling of materials between the surface and interior. As you can imagine it will have quite a number of scientific instruments, which are listed in the reference sources.   Europa Clipper is scheduled to reach Jupiter in April 2030, after which it will spend a year adjusting its orbit before beginning its scientific observations. This mission will provide unprecedented insights into Europa's structure and potential for hosting life. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona  -   A small region of the thin, disrupted, ice crust of Jupiter's moon Europa showing the interplay of surface colour with ice structures.   #SpaceExploration #Astrobiology #PlanetaryScience #ExtraterrestrialLife

New Post: <div>NASA’s flying to an ocean world. Its spacecraft is giant.</div> - https://lnkd.in/gHAjF-w6 - A NASA probe, the length of a basketball court, is headed to the tantalizing world Europa. Planetary scientists are confident this moon of Jupiter harbors a deep ocean. A looming question is whether it hosts the ingredients and conditions to support life. With around 50 close flybys of the planet, the sizable craft — the largest probe NASA has ever built for a planetary science mission — intends to find Europa's answer. "It's perhaps one of the best places beyond Earth to look for life in our solar system," Cynthia Phillips, a NASA planetary geologist and project staff scientist for the space agency's Europa Clipper mission, told Mashable. SEE ALSO: NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills. The mission's launch opportunity window opens soon, on Oct. 10, where it will blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If NASA finds that Europa is a habitable world, a second Europa mission will return, this time landing there to see if it's inhabited. A graphic comparing the size of the Europa Clipper spacecraft to a basketball court. Credit: NASA Why the Europa Clipper spacecraft is so bigEuropa Clipper, over 100 feet (30.5 meters) long, is big because it needs to generate solar power in deep space. And the Jupiter region only receives three to four percent of the sunlight that Earth receives. Hence the long wings, or arrays."You just need these giant solar arrays in order to power all your instruments," Phillips explained. "We're talking about a huge expanse of solar arrays."Capturing loads of the distant sunlight will create some 700 watts of electricity, which is "about what a small microwave oven or a coffee maker needs to operate," NASA explains. But the craft also carries batteries to help power a host of moon-sleuthing instruments."I'm really excited about this payload that we're bringing to Europa," Phillips said. "I'm really excited about this payload that we're bringing to Europa." An ice-penetrating radar will look beneath the moon's icy, cracked crust. It will see how this icy subsurface is composed, and possibly, possibly, detect where the ice meets the ocean. (Europa's ice shell is likely some 10 to 15 miles, or 15 to 25 kilometers, thick.) This radar could detect about half a mile deep, or it could be much more — that depends on how fractured the ice is and the purity of the ice (a fractured subsurface, for example, means the radar signal will bounce around more, as opposed to penetrating down). There's potential, however, that the radar will infiltrate a whopping 19 miles (30 kilometers) down. One of E

New Post: Nasa: ‘New plan needed to return rocks from Mars’ -By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent Image caption, Returning Mars samples is an immensely complex undertaking that will take years 2 hours ago The quest to return rock samples from Mars to Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major overhaul. The US space agency says the... By Jonathan AmosScience correspondentImage caption, Returning Mars samples is an immensely complex undertaking that will take years2 hours agoThe quest to return rock samples from Mars to Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major overhaul.The US space agency says the current mission design could not return the materials before 2040 on the existing funds and the $11bn (£9bn) to make it happen sooner is not sustainable.Nasa is going to canvas ideas for a cheaper, faster alternative.It hopes to have a solution on the drawing board later in the year.Returning rock samples from Mars is regarded as the single most important priority in planetary exploration, and has been for decades.Just as the Moon rocks brought home by Apollo astronauts revolutionised our understanding of early Solar System history, so materials from the Red Planet are likely to recast our thinking on the possibilities for life beyond Earth.But Nasa now acknowledges the way it's going about achieving the samples' return is simply unrealistic in the present fiscal environment. "The bottom line is that $11bn is too expensive, and not returning samples until 2040 is unacceptably too long," Nasa administrator Bill Nelson told reporters in a Monday teleconference.The former US senator said he would not allow other agency science missions to be "cannibalised" by the Mars project.He is therefore seeking fresh thinking from within Nasa and from industry. Image source, NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSImage caption, The Perseverance rover is collecting the rock samples that would be returned to EarthThe Mars Sample Return, or MSR, programme is a joint endeavour with the European Space Agency (Esa). The present architecture is already in play, in the sense that the rock samples to be returned home are in the process of being collected and catalogued on Mars today by Nasa's Perseverance rover.A dedicated follow-up mission was due to be launched later this decade that would carry a rocket to the surface of the Red Planet.Once loaded into this ascent vehicle, Perseverance's samples would then be blasted skyward to rendezvous with a European-built spacecraft that could catch them and head for Earth.It was envisaged that roughly 300g of Martian material would land in a capsule in the western US state of Utah in 2033.But an independent review that reported in September last year found faults with the way the mission design was being implemented. It doubted the schedule could be maintained and, even if it could, the cost was likely to balloon to somewhere between $8bn and $11bn.Image caption, Art

#NASA #JPL #MarsSampleReturn 'WASHINGTON — NASA will seek “out of the box” ideas in a bid to reduce the costs and shorten the schedule for returning samples from Mars. In an April 15 briefing, agency officials announced they would solicit proposals from NASA centers and from industry on “innovative designs” to reshape its Mars Sample Return (MSR) effort after an internal review confirmed the ballooning costs of the overall program. That review found that the current program would cost between $8 billion and $11 billion, the same range offered by an independent assessment completed last September. To fit that into the overall planetary science budget without affecting other programs would delay the return of samples from the early 2030s to 2040. “The bottom line is that $11 billion is too expensive and not returning samples until 2040 is unacceptably too long,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at the briefing. To try to reduce costs and schedule, NASA will issue a request for proposals April 16 seeking ideas on alternative approaches for the overall MSR architecture or specific elements of it, like the sample retrieval lander or Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) rocket that would place the collected samples into orbit. Proposals would be due to NASA May 17, with the agency issuing contracts for 90-day studies shortly thereafter. ... While NASA is looking for innovative approaches, it is not necessarily looking for new technologies. “What we’re looking for is heritage,” said Nicola Fox, NASA associate administrator for science. “What we’re hoping is that we’ll be able to get back to some more traditional, tried-and-true architectures, things that do not require huge technological leaps.” One example she gave is technology that enables a smaller, and presumably less expensive, MAV. The studies, she said, will seek proposals that could return an unspecified number of samples, and not necessarily all the roughly 30 samples that the Perseverance rover will have on board when it completes its work. ... Nelson said he has had “extensive” discussions about NASA’s MSR plans with members of Congress, including senators and representatives from California worried about the effects of the changes on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which laid off 8% of its workforce in February in response to reductions in spending on MSR. “They seem to be quite understanding of the predicament we’re in.” However, in a statement a few hours after the briefing, Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.) criticized the budget reductions. “These funding levels are woefully short for a mission that NASA itself identified as its highest priority in planetary science and that has been decades in the making,” they stated, asking Nelson “to work with Congress to better balance these cuts” to protect the JPL workforce. NASA officials said at the briefing and town hall that there was no discussion of suspending or even canceling MSR, citing its high ranking in ..."

NASA’s exploration robots have rumbled around Mars, swooped around Saturn, and flown well beyond the planets, into interstellar space. But the space agency’s engineers often direct their machines to peer back at the vivid blue dot in the distance. “During almost every mission we turn around and take a picture back home,” NASA’s former chief historian, Bill Barry, told Mashable. “There seems to be an irresistible tendency to look back at home.” “During almost every mission we turn around and take a picture back home.” Indeed, in the cosmic images below you’ll glimpse some of the farthest-away views of our humble, ocean-blanketed Earth ever captured by humanity. When we view other objects, worlds, stars, or even galaxies, we often see just dots. But to most of the cosmos, we’re just a dot in the vast ether, too. SEE ALSO: The first images of Earth are chilling Earth and the moon floating in space Earth in the top left, and the moon in the lower right. Credit: NASA Goddard / University of Arizona From 804,000 miles away, we can still see Earth in its true, marbled form, and even spy the shadowed moon, too. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft — which traveled to the rubbly asteroid Bennu to successfully capture a sample — snapped this image en route to its deeper space destination. In this black and white photo, Earth and the moon are about a quarter million miles apart. Unlike most space exploration robots, OSIRIS-REx will return back home to drop its precious asteroid sample into Earth’s atmosphere; from there the sample will plummet to the surface. A dot in the Martian sky Earth seen above Mars’ horizon. Credit: NASA / JPL / Cornell / Texas AM NASA’s Spirit rover, which explored the Martian surface for six years and found evidence of a once watery planet, snapped this historic image in 2004. “This is the first image ever taken of Earth from the surface of a planet beyond the Moon,” wrote NASA. You can see the rolling Martian hills below, and a relatively faint Earth high in Mars’ atmosphere. Here on Earth, with the unaided eye, Mars looks like a bright red dot in the sky to us Earthlings. Zooming past Earth En route to Jupiter in 2013, NASA’s Juno spacecraft swung around Earth to pick up speed, a strategy known as a gravity assist. Meanwhile, a camera aboard the craft captured views of Juno approaching Earth and the moon, beginning from 600,000 miles away. Mashable Light Speed “The result was an intriguing, low-resolution glimpse of what our world would look like to a visitor from afar,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote. By 2016, Juno arrived at the “King of the Planets,” hundreds of millions of miles beyond Earth. The vista from glorious Saturn Earth as viewed from the Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA In 2013, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft snapped an exceptional view of our vivid blue planet beyond Saturn’s glorious rings. “At a distance of just under

New Post: Nasa: ‘New plan needed to return rocks from Mars’ -By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent Image caption, Returning Mars samples is an immensely complex undertaking that will take years 2 hours ago The quest to return rock samples from Mars to Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major overhaul. The US space agency says the... By Jonathan AmosScience correspondentImage caption, Returning Mars samples is an immensely complex undertaking that will take years2 hours agoThe quest to return rock samples from Mars to Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major overhaul.The US space agency says the current mission design could not return the materials before 2040 on the existing funds and the $11bn (£9bn) to make it happen sooner is not sustainable.Nasa is going to canvas ideas for a cheaper, faster alternative.It hopes to have a solution on the drawing board later in the year.Returning rock samples from Mars is regarded as the single most important priority in planetary exploration, and has been for decades.Just as the Moon rocks brought home by Apollo astronauts revolutionised our understanding of early Solar System history, so materials from the Red Planet are likely to recast our thinking on the possibilities for life beyond Earth.But Nasa now acknowledges the way it's going about achieving the samples' return is simply unrealistic in the present fiscal environment. "The bottom line is that $11bn is too expensive, and not returning samples until 2040 is unacceptably too long," Nasa administrator Bill Nelson told reporters in a Monday teleconference.The former US senator said he would not allow other agency science missions to be "cannibalised" by the Mars project.He is therefore seeking fresh thinking from within Nasa and from industry. Image source, NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSImage caption, The Perseverance rover is collecting the rock samples that would be returned to EarthThe Mars Sample Return, or MSR, programme is a joint endeavour with the European Space Agency (Esa). The present architecture is already in play, in the sense that the rock samples to be returned home are in the process of being collected and catalogued on Mars today by Nasa's Perseverance rover.A dedicated follow-up mission was due to be launched later this decade that would carry a rocket to the surface of the Red Planet.Once loaded into this ascent vehicle, Perseverance's samples would then be blasted skyward to rendezvous with a European-built spacecraft that could catch them and head for Earth.It was envisaged that roughly 300g of Martian material would land in a capsule in the western US state of Utah in 2033.But an independent review that reported in September last year found faults with the way the mission design was being implemented. It doubted the schedule could be maintained and, even if it could, the cost was likely to balloon to somewhere between $8bn and $11bn.Image caption, Art

NASA wants to come up with a new clock for the moon, where seconds tick away faster. The moon rises behind the Home Place clock tower in Prattville, Ala., Saturday, June 22, 2013. NASA wants to come up with an out-of-this-world way to keep track of time, putting the moon on its own souped-up clock.NASA to work with other agencies abroad to come up with a new moon-centric time reference system. NASA wants to come up with an out-of-this-world way to keep track of time, putting the moon on its own souped-up clock. It's not quite a time zone like those on Earth, but an entire frame of time reference for the moon. Because there's less gravity on the moon, time there moves a tad quicker—58.7 microseconds every day—compared to Earth. So the White House Tuesday instructed NASA and other U.S agencies to work with international agencies to come up with a new moon-centric time reference system. "An atomic clock on the moon will tick at a different rate than a clock on Earth," said Kevin Coggins, NASA's top communications and navigation official. "It makes sense that when you go to another body, like the moon or Mars that each one gets its own heartbeat." So everything on the moon will operate on the speeded-up moon time. The last time NASA sent astronauts to the moon they wore watches, but timing wasn't as precise and critical as it now with GPS, satellites and intricate computer and communications systems, he said. Those microseconds matter when high tech systems interact. Last year, the European Space Agency said Earth needs to come up with a unified time for the moon, where a day lasts 29.5 Earth days. The International Space Station, being in low Earth orbit, will continue to use coordinated universal time or UTC. But just where the new space time kicks in is something that NASA has to figure out. Even Earth's time speeds up and slows down, requiring leap seconds. Unlike on Earth, the moon will not have daylight saving time. The White House wants NASA to come up with a preliminary idea by the end of the year and have a final plan by the end of 2026. NASA is aiming to send astronauts around the moon in September 2025 and land people there a year later. #moon #clock #earth #seconds #faster #leap #UTC #nasa #esa

New Post: Nasa: ‘New plan needed to return rocks from Mars’ -By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent Image caption, Returning Mars samples is an immensely complex undertaking that will take years 2 hours ago The quest to return rock samples from Mars to Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major overhaul. The US space agency says the... By Jonathan AmosScience correspondentImage caption, Returning Mars samples is an immensely complex undertaking that will take years2 hours agoThe quest to return rock samples from Mars to Earth to see if they contain traces of past life is going to go through a major overhaul.The US space agency says the current mission design could not return the materials before 2040 on the existing funds and the $11bn (£9bn) to make it happen sooner is not sustainable.Nasa is going to canvas ideas for a cheaper, faster alternative.It hopes to have a solution on the drawing board later in the year.Returning rock samples from Mars is regarded as the single most important priority in planetary exploration, and has been for decades.Just as the Moon rocks brought home by Apollo astronauts revolutionised our understanding of early Solar System history, so materials from the Red Planet are likely to recast our thinking on the possibilities for life beyond Earth.But Nasa now acknowledges the way it's going about achieving the samples' return is simply unrealistic in the present fiscal environment. "The bottom line is that $11bn is too expensive, and not returning samples until 2040 is unacceptably too long," Nasa administrator Bill Nelson told reporters in a Monday teleconference.The former US senator said he would not allow other agency science missions to be "cannibalised" by the Mars project.He is therefore seeking fresh thinking from within Nasa and from industry. Image source, NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSImage caption, The Perseverance rover is collecting the rock samples that would be returned to EarthThe Mars Sample Return, or MSR, programme is a joint endeavour with the European Space Agency (Esa). The present architecture is already in play, in the sense that the rock samples to be returned home are in the process of being collected and catalogued on Mars today by Nasa's Perseverance rover.A dedicated follow-up mission was due to be launched later this decade that would carry a rocket to the surface of the Red Planet.Once loaded into this ascent vehicle, Perseverance's samples would then be blasted skyward to rendezvous with a European-built spacecraft that could catch them and head for Earth.It was envisaged that roughly 300g of Martian material would land in a capsule in the western US state of Utah in 2033.But an independent review that reported in September last year found faults with the way the mission design was being implemented. It doubted the schedule could be maintained and, even if it could, the cost was likely to balloon to somewhere between $8bn and $11bn.Image caption, Art