Plan to melt through Europa's ice - looking at the technology for a future Europa lander.

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Thats some great ideas from the German Aerospace , is this ESA going to look below, I wonder why NASA haven't tried to do something like this earlier? I hope we can see something break through Europa's Ice shield, and dig down below and maybe swim around and take images of any sub-surface luquid water in the near future, what a great thing it would be.

Wouldn't it be simpler to have a surface lander/base and trail an umbilical cable through the ice?

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Yes, the cable idea would seem good, maybe simpler and also much better for communications, but maybe there are some problems like cable cord can break? maybe its weight is too much or its leght would limit or prevent the probe from exploring far away?
The cable idea does appear like a very good one, maybe reliable, but I think having a powerful transmitter must have other benefits otherwise the wouldn't consider and have used the wire-cable option instead..maybe technology like this can be also used to dig below the Mars polar ice caps?

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/image...81_prob203.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/895000..._europa300.jpg

But the ice would re-freeze around the cable…

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They mention nothing about the possibility of innoculating Europa with terrestrial life that hitched a ride on the probe. I wonder how they could prevent that.

Any ideas, anyone?

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One problem I can see with a cable is that if the ice is 10-30 km thick (as stated in the article), there is going to be a lot of power loss on 30 km of copper wire.

The article mentions the problem of the hole freezing behind the probe and I have to think that's a serious problem if you have to go 10 km.
But if the hole is frozen in back of you, what does positive buoyancy buy you, are you supposed to return up the frozen hole? I would think you have to measure in-situ (whatever those measurements are) and return just the data. Maybe you make the probe self-powered, and return the data via a fiber-optic connection - 30 km is no problem for fiber optics.

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I think the idea was for the probe to be completely self-contained - no 30km long cable frozen in the ice. The probe would have to either be able to melt its way back to the surface, or have a transmitter capable of sending a signal through the ice to a surface relay.

Fiber cable could transfer data for that distace, but if the liquid freezes around it, you would be stuck, I guess...

Maybe the probe can be made to melt it's way back to the surface if needed....

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Put the cable reel on the probe, so any cable already laid is stationary.

The problem is that, on earth at least, ice moves. I'd think there'd be a pretty good chance of the cable snapping before the probe tunnels all the way through.

Then there's the question about the weight of a transmitter capable of broadcasting through 30 km of ice vs the weight of 30 km of cable (and figuring out how to make the cable reel reliable under those circumstances). Of course, there's the corresponding problem of knowing the makeup of the ice (particularly whether it's an insulator or a conductor).

They should pick a landing site where the ice has recently cracked, or liquid has started to melt up and go onto the surface, I have seen that some people think the ice might only be 1Km thick in these types of fresh areas.

some more picture and news on europa moon of jupiter news

www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Nov02/EuropanBands.html

http://www.gfy.ku.dk/~kgs/BILLEDERwww/PIA02590.jpg
http://www.astronomy.com/Content/Dyn...0/746tljzz.asp
http://athena.cornell.edu/images/did...now/europa.jpg
: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993421

I think what is needed first is an orbiter to closely study europa and find out more about the conditions on the moon, how active it is, exactly how thick the ice is, etc...

Once they do get a probe below the ice.. i would love it if there were photos and not just data on the composition of the water and a microbe test..

I wonder how hard it would be to send a radio signal through several km of ice...

I think a nuclear powered melter would be great.. but i wonder how many people would make a stink about us "polluting" another world...

It's impossible at any kind of a decent wavelength. An Ultra Low Frequency Radio signal could travel through the ice, but the radio transmitters at that frequency tend to be a few kilometers in size - too big for attaching to a probe. Also, signals sent at ULF have a bandwidth of approximately 1 word per second - far too slow.

That only leaves two possibilities for communications: Cable (fibre optic probably) or sonar. Water (and presumably ice - I'm guessing about ice) is a great transmitter of sound. If you mount an active sonar on the probe, and have the lander on the surface stick another one into the ice, they might be able to hear each other.

sonar is pretty interesting.. but not very good for transmitting any significant amount of data..

Sounds like fiber would be best..

Sounds good to me. Luckily, fiber is light. We could attach a spool of 50 Km worth and play it out behind the probe as it sinks. This would also give a good idea of how far we've gone. Once we're through the ice, we could take water samples and perform tests at various depths. We could also carry a flood light for those pictures that convince the public to keep funding NASA.

We could continue all the way down to the bottom (or 50 Km, whichever comes first). If we reach the bottom, I'd say some soil samples are in order.

The risk of line breakage can be minimized by drilling as far away from the 'fault lines' as possible. We'd have to get through more ice, but it might be worth it.

How about a four part craft. An orbiter to communicate with Earth. A lander, to communicate with the orbiter. A sub-ice base station to communicate with the lander via fiber optic cable. A free roving submersible to explore, take samples and photos, etc. The base station would have a homing beacon so that the sub could find it again.

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Wasn't there a report recently that Europas subocean might actually be made mostly of ammonia instead of water?

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Egad, a spool of cable 30-50 km long and stout enough to support even a tiny probe would be huge.

The cable doesn't have to support anything.
1) The probe is somewhat bouyant.
2) The water refreezes behind it as it melts through the ice.

A fiber optic cable to carry the data would be no thicker than a human hair.

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T. Anderson

just thinking outside the box here. How much ice would a nuke melt and how long would it take to refreeze?

using nuclear bombs to dig holes, not the best way to go digging

http://www.spacedaily.com/images/nuc...ater-bw-bg.jpg

http://www.mines.edu/students/d/dstillma/nuke2.html

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