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| Europa, bulan yang mengelilingi Jupiter (Foto: NASA) |
CALIFORNIA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) continues to search for traces of life on Mars. Nevertheless one astronomer United States (U.S.) believe, Europa - one of the moons surrounding Jupiter - have a more promising environment when compared with the 'Red Planet'.
"Europa is a place in our solar system beyond Earth that may have a life," said planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, as quoted from The Age, Tuesday (19/02/2013).
"That is where we have to explore it, this time we thought the concept to get there at a reasonable cost," he continued.
Further Pappalardo explained, Europa is the most promising place because it has a relatively thin layer of ice and sea. "We know there are oxidants on the surface of Europa," he said.
At the request of NASA, the mission to explore Europa revised in order to reduce costs. Later as a result of the review, JPL and the Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland developed a new exploration project named 'Clipper' at a cost of two billion dollars, including the launch.
This project followed the success of Cassini, who managed to explore Titan, Saturn's moon plans if given the green light by NASA, the spacecraft will orbit Jupiter and flew near Europa.
"That way we can get effective coverage of Europa by surrounding objects," said Pappalardo.
If the plan disetuji, Clipper could be launched in 2021 and takes three to six years to reach Europa. In comparison, it took only six months to reach Mars.
Unfortunately, NASA has announced late last year that no funds are out for Clipper mission. Even the U.S. space agency will send a new robot Curiosity in 2020 which is estimated to cost $ 2, 5 billion.
For your information, Europa is the sixth moon of the planet Jupiter closest and smallest of the four Galilean satellites. Europa discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and possibly also discovered independently by Simon Marius in the same time.
Source : Okezone
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