All Systems Go for NASA's Mission to Jupiter Moon Europa
Europa is considered one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of present-day life, and a new NASA mission to explore this potential is moving forward.
Beyond Earth, Jupiter's moon Europa is considered one of the most promising places in the  solar system to search for signs of present-day life, and a new NASA mission to  explore this potential is moving forward from concept review to development.NASA's  mission concept -- to conduct a detailed survey ofEuropaand  investigate its habitability -- has successfully completed its first major  review by the agency and now is entering the development phase known as  formulation."Today we're  taking an exciting step from concept to mission, in our quest to find signs of  life beyond Earth," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's  Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "Observations of Europa have  provided us with tantalizing clues over the last two decades, and the time has  come to seek answers to one of humanity's most profound questions."NASA's Galileo missionto Jupiter in the late 1990s produced strong evidence that  Europa, about the size of Earth's moon, has an ocean beneath its frozen crust.  If proven to exist, this global ocean could hold more than twice as much water  as Earth. With abundant salt water, a rocky sea floor, and the energy and  chemistry provided by tidal heating, Europa may have the ingredients needed to  support simple organisms.The mission  plan calls for a spacecraft to be launched to Jupiter in the 2020s, arriving in the distant planet's orbit after a journey of several years. The spacecraft  would orbit the giant planet about every two weeks, providing many  opportunities for close flybys of Europa. The mission plan includes 45  flybys, during which the spacecraft would image the moon's icy surface at high  resolution and investigate its composition and the structure of its interior  and icy shell.NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has been assigned the  responsibility of managing the project. JPL has been studying the  multiple-flyby mission concept, in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins  University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, since 2011.Instruments selected for the Europa mission's scientific payload wereannouncedby NASA on May 26. Institutions supplying instruments include APL; JPL; Arizona  State University, Tempe; the University of Texas at Austin; Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio; and the University of Colorado, Boulder."It's a great  day for science," said Joan Salute, Europa program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We are thrilled to pass the first major milestone  in the lifecycle of a mission that will ultimately inform us on the  habitability of Europa."NASA's  Science Mission Directorate in Washington conducts a wide variety of research  and scientific exploration programs for Earth studies, space weather, the solar  system and the universe. The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA.For more  information about NASA's mission to Europa, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/europa