Europa, Jupiter's Second Moon: We Absolutely Must Get There!
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Europa, Jupiter's second moon — we absolutely must get there. While everyone looks toward the dusty plains of Mars, imagining geodesic domes and rovers racing among red rocks, there's an icy world in Jupiter's orbit that could prove to be the true gem of the solar system. A world where, beneath an ice crust, hides more water than exists in all of Earth's oceans combined — a planetary aquarium that could host more life than we've ever dared to dream.
Which moon are we talking about? Well, who doesn’t remember 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, where the enigmatic monolith left a disturbing message for us Earthlings: “All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.” Well, maybe it's time to disobey that mysterious warning. What do you think? Try to give yourselves an answer after watching this spectacular video.
A tiny point of light — that’s what Europa was for almost four centuries, a minuscule light source, as faint as a sixth-magnitude star. Nothing more than the second moon in order of distance from Jupiter and the smallest of the four discovered by Galileo in January of 1610. By the end of the 19th century, scientists estimated its diameter to be about 3,100 km (1,926 miles), comparable to our moon. It was, therefore, reasonable to think it was a very similar body — arid and heavily cratered.
It was only in the 1960s, thanks to the first spectroscopic studies, that suspicion arose that its surface might be covered with ice. The definitive word came from interplanetary probes and the first missions to the outer planets of the solar system. It was Voyager 1, in March of 1979, that photographed the Galilean satellites up close for the first time — particularly Io, Ganymede, and Callisto. Meanwhile, Europa, more distant during the probe's flyby, had to wait for Voyager 2's arrival in July of 1979.
The first high-resolution images of Europa revealed ice plains crossed by thousands of dark streaks that overlapped like a gigantic reddish network across the surface. But immediately, something even more extraordinary was noticed — the almost complete absence of impact craters. Some were detected, but not in the numbers expected for a planet with little or no atmosphere. In their place were long scars that sometimes abruptly interrupted, suggesting that the surface had somehow torn, bringing darker material up from the depths.
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Credits: Ron Miller, Mark A. Garlick / MarkGarlick.com ,Elon Musk/SpaceX/ Flickr
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00:00 Intro
01:04 Discovery and Secrets
03:05 Questions of crucial importance
06:46 Challenges of Reaching and Colonizing Europa
12:22 The Timeline of Europa Exploration
14:06 The Human Factor
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