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Hubble finds evidence of persistent water vapor in one hemisphere of Europa
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoThere's going to be even a bigger monolith out there.
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- troyvit 5y agoHow hard would it be to fly a probe through that vapor like we do through the tails of comets to collect some samples of that vapor?
- poundofshrimp 5y ago> The Europa Clipper will not orbit Europa, but instead orbit Jupiter and conduct 44 flybys of Europa at altitudes from 25 to 2,700 km (16 to 1,678 mi) each during its 3.5-year mission.[…] The Europa Clipper could conceivably flyby at low altitude through the plumes of water vapor erupting from the moon's ice crust, thus sampling its subsurface ocean without having to land on the surface and drill through the ice. Excitingly, this seems to be a real opportunity for the Europa Clipper mission. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoArriving in April 2030 oof Jupiter is so far away. I hope the next generation of heavy lift vehicles allows for shorter transit to the outer planets.
- profmonocle 5y agoReminds me of watching New Horizons launch as a High School junior, then excitedly watching the images come in when I was in my mid-20's. Really drives home how unbelievably vast astronomical distances are, even just within our one solar system. One of the fastest objects humanity has ever built, and it took more than a third of my life to reach its destination.
- adrianN 5y agoI'm a bit sad that we didn't pursue nuclear propulsion for interplanetary missions. A nuclear rocket could reach Jupiter much faster.
- bserge 5y agoPeople are afraid of nuclear power plants. You think they'd ever allow nuclear space flight? Think of the 0.05% chance of launch failure, all that radioactive shit spread in the air, alongside all the other dangerous shit we already put there willingly!
- adrianN 5y agoYes there are very good reasons not to put 10000 nukes on a ship and try to launch it. But it would be extremely cool to have manned missions to the gas giants and to send probes to nearby stars. I don't see how that will be possible without nuclear propulsion.
- robbedpeter 5y agoAsteroid mining first - we will need processing and refinement infrastructure in space, to start building facilities that aren't in earth orbit, so they don't pose radioactive threats. It's thought that there is a lot of uranium and other nuclear fuels available in asteroids throughout the solar system. Once asteroid mining kicks off, all sorts of possibilities open up that are overly expensive or dangerous for earth based enterprises.
- ianai 5y agoTotally. I wonder about turning larger asteroid(s) into colonies/ships themselves. There’s one large one that already orbits between mars and the outer planets with a sizable radius. I wonder about hollowing it out and building essentially a large city in its interior. Edit-I think it’s 1036 Ganymed.
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- wcoenen 5y agoAs far as I understand, the next generation of heavy lift vehicles (i.e. Starship, New Glenn, SLS) will not allow us to do better than a Hohmann transfer. And that would still mean waiting for the launch window to Jupiter (period 1.1 years) and a transfer of 3.7 years. So Clipper's cruise of 5.5 years really isn't so bad. Future space probes will likely continue to save delta-v by taking a slightly slower trajectory with gravity assists.
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoInteresting. Even with orbital refueling of starship?
- WJW 5y agoHohmann transfers (the most efficient path) take a fixed amount of delta-V, so how much fuel you have does not really matter. You could probably find a quicker path if you are willing to sacrifice some efficiency, but even then it is going to take several years to get there with current technology. Since probes don't really care about travel time, might as well take the most efficient path so that you have fuel left over for interesting maneuvers near the destination.
- Valgrim 5y agoOr more interesting probes, such as deep-drilling equipment
- mrfusion 5y agoStarship could open up a lot of options. There’s no reason it couldn’t launch a small probe loaded to the gills with fuel and engines and make a shorter trip.
- baq 5y agoJust imagine getting a 90 ton kick stage for a 500kg probe like New Horizons.
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- EdwardDiego 5y agoAnd by not landing on the ice, we won't risk angering Star Child Dave Bowman.
- bpodgursky 5y agoI didn't realize Hubble was even being pointed at objects within the solar system.
- gattr 5y agoIt gets better; one of JWST's uses will be whole-planet monitoring of Mars (which can't be conveniently done by Mars orbiters): https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-the-webb-telescope-will-explore-mars https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-the-webb-telescope-will-exp...
- m4rtink 5y agoOne camera on the Indian orbiter is used for that currently IIRC. A convenient side effect of the tech level and high orbit of the probe.
- vmception 5y agoI hope they find organic poop!
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- tudorw 5y ago'Attempt no landing there.'
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