After the success of NASA’s fly-bye mission, called the Europa Clipper that was launched in 2020, NASA started to plan a manned mission the icy moon. The Europa Clipper sent back data that proved what many have believed that there in fact is a sub-ocean underneath and that it is highly likely that it is hospitable for life. The mission that I was placed would be a single person travelling to Europa. I would land safely to Europa and set up a lander to extract a core sample of the ice and hopefully organisms that could have been frozen in the thin layer of ice. The spacecraft used will be mainly using solar sails to propel the spacecraft through the journey.
The year is now 2030, the date to launch the rocket. We set the launch date for a week due to mapping out the trajectories and speed of space debris orbiting the earth. After figuring out the safest day we set …show more content…
Europa is similar in the size of the earths moon but slightly smaller. The surface is fairly new due to the lack of crater impacts. The surface has many crevices and cracks making it look like glaciers compressing and stretching. This is what brought scientists so curious. The stretching due to the orbit around Jupiter causes heat that helps sustain a subsurface ocean. When I land I would have to take into account by the possibility of the ice shifting underneath me. Another concern is the random plumes of vapor coming through the ice. The vapor is caused by the core spewing out heat into the sub ocean. The core is likely composed of an iron material. The temperatures on the surface can drop to minus 220 degrees Celsius. A special suit is required in order to survive the freezing temperatures. Europa has a very thin atmosphere that is entirely composed of oxygen. The result of this thin atmosphere means that it will be very quiet with no weather and wind conditions. The gravity is 13% of earths gravity making it similar the earths