Report: NASA Wants To Put A Lander Europa's Surface To Look For Life

NASA has released an outline report of an initial set of objectives for a proposed mission to the surface of Jupiter's icy moon. The primary objectives for a proposed mission are to search directly evidence of life.

According to New Scientist, the main motif is to search direct evidence of life. Since 1990 Europe has been a prime target to search extraterrestrial life when the Galileo orbiter indicated that a saltwater ocean may exist beneath its icy crust.

Europe is thought to be only places where the ocean is in contact with a rocky seafloor. This thought is making Europe one of the most promising prospects in the search for life in our solar system.

The other objective of the mission is to analyze samples from Europa's surface to assess its habitability and characterizing its surface to help support future robotics exploration there. The new report has suggested," the mission would significantly make understanding if Europa has an Ocean world."

NASA has reported the team has also recommended a number of life-detecting instruments, such as a spectrometer to sift through particles from Europa's surface. The microscope is used to search for microbial cells and a vibration spectrometer to analyze the molecular composition of samples.

The new report proposes using an automated 'sky crane system similar to the one used to land the Mars Curiosity Rover in 2012. This will be the first used system since the 19th century. The new mission will be the first NASA mission since the Mars Viking Landers in late 1970 to conduct an in situ search for life beyond our planet. The outlined Lander mission is separate from the Europa flyby mission confirmed for launch in the early 2020s.

However, the spacecraft will perform a series of 45 close flybys of Europa, mapping and the characteristics of its ocean and ice shell. NASA routinely conducts these reports to weigh up the challenges value of the proposed mission.

Meanwhile, NASA discusses the report that will take place over the next couple of months in Texas and Arizona.