The US space agency NASA has announced a competition for the best concept of experiments for the exploration program of Europa, the satellite of Jupiter, on the surface of which the space probe will land.
This moon of Jupiter, according to planetary scientists, has a deep ocean of liquid water under its icy shell. Because of this feature, Europa became one of the first candidates to search for life in the solar system.
NASA and other space agencies have been developing plans for landing in Europe for several decades. They recently received support from the American Congress.
Scientists hope that such a device will be launched already in the 20s of this century.
While NASA does not yet have a specific launch program, the agency said it has the funding to run a competition for ideas on the science behind the upcoming expedition.
"The possibility of landing a craft on the surface of this mysterious icy moon, a craft that can begin to explore a world that may have life, is at the heart of the concept that NASA scientists are considering," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's head of science.
NASA's announcement is a notice of a two-stage idea competition. Various groups of scientists are invited to submit proposals, which will then be evaluated by NASA experts.
At the first stage of the competition, about 10 proposals will be selected. They will then be considered in the second phase.
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Last year, in response to a directive passed by Congress, NASA developed a concept for a new mission to land the craft on the surface of Europe.
The NASA report refers to a four-leg lander that will land using the Sky Train system, which was tested on Mars in 2012 during the landing of the Curiosity mobile laboratory. However, this will use a much longer cable to avoid contamination of Europa's surface with rocket fuel.
This planned vehicle will have some of the features of the Phoenix probe, which landed in the arctic regions of Mars in May 2008. "Phoenix" was equipped with a special cutter, which was supposed to cut the icy soil for further collection of its samples using a fence.
Probably, the future probe will have, in addition to a similar cutter and an intake device, a special saw, which will have to cut through the surface ice to a depth of at least 10 cm, where there are layers of ice that are not affected by surface radiation.
Scientists know little about the physical properties of such ice, which formed at temperatures around minus 170 degrees Celsius. However, they proceed from the assumption that it will be very hard and will hardly yield to instrumental influence.
However, scientists believe that if there is life in the surface layers of ice, earthly instruments will be able to determine its presence, recording the concentration of microbial cells in the amount of 100 cells per cubic centimeter.
Although Europa's ice sheet is up to 100 km thick, studying its surface can provide indications of what is happening beneath it in the subglacial ocean.
In this ice shell, an extremely slow drift of ice plates with different temperatures occurs. Such plates or ice diapirs, as they are called in tectonics, can carry with them traces of organic life from the depths of the ocean.
“The lander needs to get the freshest and cleanest ice sample. This can be achieved either by deep drilling or by landing at a location where ice or water has just been ejected from great depths,”said Kurt Neibur, a member of NASA's science team.
Images taken by the Hubble Orbiting Telescope indicate the possible presence of geysers that could throw ice onto Europa's surface.
The launch of the lander is planned to be carried out several years after the Europa Clipper flight past Europe, which is planned to be launched in the early 1920s.
Paul Rincon