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Is Europa a Wet Io?
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 07:05 am ET
08 February 2001
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Exploration on hold
Still on duty at Jupiter and zipping amongst that planet’s entourage of moons is the Galileo spacecraft.
A yet-to-be-approved extended plan is to have the craft snag close encounters with both Callisto and volcanic Io this year. Galileo would scream past tiny Amalthea next year. In 2003, the interplanetary probe would then nose dive into Jupiter itself, said Torrence Johnson, Galileo project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
Jupiter's Io is thought likely to have been a wet world in its early formative years. If true, a look at today's Io and its volcano-spewing surface might also be a view of Europa's sea floor. Some scientists speculate that Europa is rife with ice volcanoes, but no evidence of surface changes have been spotted in Galileo spacecraft pictures.
Only from a distance would Europa be viewed again by Galileo before mission’s end.
A follow-on Europa Orbiter Mission is in limbo, said Kenneth Klaasen of JPL. Originally announced as a 2003 launch, the Europa Orbiter Mission is plagued with cost growth, technology issues, need for a qualified launch vehicle and other woes, he said.
Now slipped to a possible 2008 liftoff, the Europa Orbiter Mission would arrive at Jupiter in 2010, then swing into orbit around Europa in 2012.
A NASA independent review of the project is to begin next month.
"In six months or so we should have a much better idea of when the Europa Orbiter Mission really will happen," Klaasen said.
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