For anyone who doesn't know about the Clipper: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/ > "The Europa Clipper is a concept under study by NASA that would conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter's moon Europa and would investigate whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life."
Europa is a very interesting moon; the atmosphere has oxygen and there's an ice shell that could hide considerable amounts of water. Could there be microbial life?
On the sci fi side, here's a wikipedia article about terraforming Europa: http://goo.gl/KNDV82
Important note:
> Europa receives about 540 rem a day (500 is already potentially fatal) from Jupiter's large radiation belts (10 times stronger than Earth's Van Allen radiation belts), and may prove a health threat to colonists. The satellite lacks a magnetosphere, which not only leaves it exposed to radiation by Jupiter, but to the solar wind.
Luckily water is pretty good at blocking that sort of charged particle radiation. As off-Earth environments go underwater is pretty damn convivial. People go Scuba diving for fun!
It is hard for me to get excited about just doing orbital science, especially since ESA's JUICE is already going to be doing this in the 2020s. I'd be much more excited if they got to deploy something like the VALKYRIE Icy Moon Diver: http://www.geek.com/science/nasas-ice-drilling-europa-robot-...
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 35.9 ms ] threadEuropa is a very interesting moon; the atmosphere has oxygen and there's an ice shell that could hide considerable amounts of water. Could there be microbial life?
On the sci fi side, here's a wikipedia article about terraforming Europa: http://goo.gl/KNDV82
Important note: > Europa receives about 540 rem a day (500 is already potentially fatal) from Jupiter's large radiation belts (10 times stronger than Earth's Van Allen radiation belts), and may prove a health threat to colonists. The satellite lacks a magnetosphere, which not only leaves it exposed to radiation by Jupiter, but to the solar wind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moon_Explorer