Voyager 1 and 2 took the first close-up images of Europa when they flew through the Jupiter system in 1979. The images showed a relatively smooth surface with few craters or mountains, but scratched with bands and ridges. The lack of large impact craters, which build up as meteorites strike a planetary body over millions or billions of years, meant that some process was erasing them. Separated ridges, where it looked as if icy material had gushed up between the walls, also suggested a geologically active world. Scientists observed long linear features that they determined could be created if the surface was disconnected from the moon’s interior — for example, with a liquid ocean sandwiched between them.
On Earth, microbes can live near deep-sea vents where warm, chemical-rich material bubbles up. Although no hard evidence yet exists, some scientists suspect that Europa’s tidal heating creates volcanoes and hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, just as tectonic activity does on Earth. Providing more than just a heat source, any volcanoes or vents would also offer an important source of nutrients. The heat and activity in the interior would drive chemical reactions and bring up new material into the ocean. If Europa’s interior is highly active, there could be a large exchange of material, which would provide a steady flow of nutrients and even the chemical building blocks for life. Thus, determining just how active Europa is remains a key question for scientists investigating the moon’s potential habitability.
Above the surface, intense radiation from Jupiter also helps break down molecules. These chemical bits and pieces can then reform to create new compounds that could also be useful to microbial life. Open fissures on the surface might allow these compounds to eventually circulate below.
“Biologists still struggle to put a definition on what is alive and what is not alive,” says Curt Niebur, a scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “It’s hard enough [searching for life] on Earth, so doing that halfway across the solar system with a robotic spacecraft is even more difficult, more complicated, and more challenging.”
Because of the seemingly uninhabitable surface conditions, any probe sent to the moon would theoretically have to drill down some unknown distance before sampling for life. Scientists are working on ways to achieve this, but in the near future, they’ll only be able to take measurements remotely.
Niebur is working on just that as the program scientist for NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which aims to launch in 2023. By studying the moon in detail, the mission will determine whether Europa has conditions suitable for life.
Entering orbit around Europa, the craft will use nine instruments to investigate the moon’s surface and interior. At closest approach, Europa Clipper will speed by just 3 miles (5 km) above the surface, low enough to fly through geyser bursts. A mass spectrometer and dust mass analyzer will study particles ejected in the bursts, while an ultraviolet spectrograph will image the plumes from afar and identify their composition. Other instruments will look for thermal signatures on the surface to detect new bursts, while ice-penetrating radar will measure the thickness of the icy shell. A magnetometer will measure the strength of the moon’s magnetic field to probe its interior. These data will help scientists determine how deep the ocean might be, as well as its salinity.
Perhaps the best way to capture conclusive evidence of life on Europa is to take a photo. Scientists think their best bet is to equip the Europa Lander with a microscope for imaging water and ice samples.
Jay Nadeau, a biophysicist at Portland State University, and her collaborators are testing autonomous microscopes robust enough to withstand an interplanetary journey. They’re also developing a method of creating 3D images, similar to a hologram, with a camera that can simultaneously focus at multiple distances to avoid blurry images. However, such images generate a lot of data, and the proposed lander’s power supply and communications bandwidth for sending information back to Earth is limited. With multiple instruments vying for those necessities, Nadeau suspects they’ll have enough bandwidth to send back only a few 3D pictures. “There’s not much data you can send back from the mission, so we’re going to need a computer algorithm to say, ‘This picture is actually interesting and we’ll send it back to Earth,’” Nadeau says.
The first missions will likely only be able to take surface samples, which would show life that has been preserved in ice. To that end, Nadeau and her team have taken their test instruments to extreme locations in the Arctic. Through studying microbial life in 100,000-year-old glaciers, Nadeau is trying to understand what they might be able to see on Europa. These types of studies are helping her create better computer algorithms to look for life, dead or alive.
Along with a microscope and potentially a drill, the Europa Lander mission would carry other instruments, including seismometers to investigate subsurface structure and spectrometers to analyze surface material composition.
While it’s difficult to speculate whether life will be found on Europa, there is certainly cause to think it’s a habitable place. If the planned and proposed missions stay on track, we may have an answer within a decade. Regardless of whether Europa is habitable or not, our observations will turn up new and interesting aspects of the moon to study.
“If life didn’t arise [on Europa], that makes life on Earth all the more special,” Niebur says. “But if we find that life did arise, that frankly makes the universe all the more special.”