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posted by martyb on Friday February 02 2018, @03:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the 'All-these-worlds-are-yours,-except-Europa.-Attempt-no-landing-there." dept.

Future Europa landers may be in danger of sinking into a surface less dense than freshly fallen snow:

Space scientists have every reason to be fascinated with Jupiter's moon Europa, and, in 2017, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced they are planning a joint mission to land there. As the video above explains, this little moon is thought to have a liquid ocean submerged beneath an icy crust. Scientists believe it could host extraterrestrial life. But Europa's surface is much more alien than any we've ever visited. With its extremely thin atmosphere, low gravity – and a surface temperature of some -350 degrees F. (–176 °C.) – Europa might not be kind to a landing spacecraft. The moon's surface might be unexpectedly hard. Or – as evidenced by a study from the Planetary Science Institute announced on January 24, 2018 – Europa's surface might be so porous that any craft trying to land would simply sink.

The study – published in the peer-reviewed journal Icarus – comes from scientist Robert Nelson. If you're a student of space history, its results might sound familiar. Nelson pointed out in his statement:

Of course, before the landing of the Luna 2 robotic spacecraft in 1959, there was concern that the moon might be covered in low density dust into which any future astronauts might sink.

Now Europa is the source of a similar scariness, with Nelson's study showing that Europa's surface could be as much as 95 percent porous.

Laboratory simulations of planetary surfaces: Understanding regolith physical properties from remote photopolarimetric observations (DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2017.11.021) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 02 2018, @04:33PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday February 02 2018, @04:33PM (#632042) Journal

    The intelligent life forms who live on Europa purposely made the surface porous to keep curious Earthlings from landing any probes on their world.

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  • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday February 02 2018, @04:48PM

    by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Friday February 02 2018, @04:48PM (#632047) Journal

    The monolith intelligent life forms who live on Europa purposely made the surface porous to keep curious Earthlings from landing any probes on their world.

    FTFY.

    And when I started reading the story I thought exactly of the similarity to the Moon quote. Hopefully we'll have better experimentation before dropping a multi-instrument probe there like the study indicates. (Or do you build a much less costly probe and piggy back it on some other project where the orbital mechanics work out to send it along...)

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