The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter is an ambitious proposed mission to orbit three planet-sized moons of Jupiter -- Callisto, Ganymede and Europa -- which may harbor vast oceans beneath their icy surfaces. The mission would launch in 2012 or later.
Posted on 09/20/2004 8:31:37 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Northrop Grumman Space Technology has been selected to help NASA design a nuclear-powered spacecraft to orbit and explore three moons of Jupiter that may have oceans beneath their icy surfaces. The $400 million contract with the Redondo Beach, Calif.-based unit of Northrop Grumman covers work through mid-2008, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Monday.
The Prometheus Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter spacecraft will be designed to explore Callisto, Ganymede and Europa sometime in the next decade, after launching in 2012 or later.
Scientists want to know what the big moons are made of, their history and whether the oceans that possibly exist under the ice could sustain life.
It would be the first NASA mission to use nuclear electric propulsion, in which a reactor provides power to generate electricity for engines that expel electrically charged particles called ions to provide thrust.
---
On the Net:
JPL JIMO mission page: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/
The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter is an ambitious proposed mission to orbit three planet-sized moons of Jupiter -- Callisto, Ganymede and Europa -- which may harbor vast oceans beneath their icy surfaces. The mission would launch in 2012 or later.
We're exploring Europa?
Oh jeez, the monolith is gonna be ticked.
ping
We just can't land there.
Ah ok. For some reason "explore" tripped the part of my brain that made me think we were landing.
kewl! :))
I'm so glad you posted this. My son works for Northrop Grumman. I sent him the link and it ends up he was part of the team that wrote the proposal, and he may get to work on the project. Since a lot of his work is classified, he doesn't tell me about the projects.
Thanks for the ping. :-)
Cool project.
We may not know exactly what he is working on, but we're as proud of him as you are. This is great stuff!
$400 million is a serious contract. NASA will be doing a lot of fresh contracting with fresh companies and businesses. Everybody has an equal shot at it although some of the remnants of the Old Boy Network is no doubt hanging on to every piece it can.
We should be. We've already circled them a bunch of times. Unfortunately, the ecos don't want us to put a lander on the surface and disturb the fragile Europan ecology. Whatever that is.
While it does make sense to send robots to places like Jupiter (lethal radiation levels), there is no reason not to send a manned mission to Mars. It's like we started exploring the solar system with the Apollo missions, and then stopped when the space shuttles were built.
I really hate those stupid orbital trucks.
One of the main problems is not disturbing the Europan ecology, it's creating one. If Europa is sterile (probably the case), it might still have a subsurface environment amenable to life -- and bugs have proven that they can live almost anywhere. So if the orbiter wasn't completely sterile, it might "infect" Europa with Earth bugs.
That's why they crashed (or are going to crash? did they do it already?) Galileo into Jupiter -- so it wouldn't be careening around the moons unguided and chaotically and possibly crash-land on Europa and infect the moon.
Good point. They have been experimenting with techniques in an attempt to sample lake Vostok in the Antarctic without contaminating it. The last I saw (on TV) they were about ready to test a sterile probe. If they can show that it can be safely used in lake Vostok, then the next step would be to send something similar to it to Europa.
And the mighty Galileo was indeed sent to a fiery death in Jupiter's atmosphere. It was the little spaceship that could. Even with all of it's problems, it lasted many years past even the best life expectancy predictions. Finally, they had to safely destroy it while it was still under some semblance of control. It had gotten to the point that systems were failing faster than they could patch them together.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.