Icy Realm: Search for life

In 1610, Galileo Galilei gazed through his telescope and discovered Jupiter's four orbiting moons. Little did he know, Europa would become a sensational point in the search for extraterrestrial life. It is an icy moon that might hold the key to discovering extraterrestrial life, as its subsurface ocean contains as much as twice the water of all Earth’s oceans. This ocean, kept liquid by tidal heating from Jupiter’s immense gravitational pull, is believed to harbor all life-sustaining ingredients: water, heat, and possibly even chemical nutrients. A land-and-rove mission would study Europa’s icy surface in detail for organic molecules, water vapor plumes vented into space, and crustal drilling to study the hidden ocean beneath. As would be expected in such missions, RPS would be extremely crucial, for at such distances from the Sun, any form of solar power is unthinkable, while frigid temperature average -260F, needing continuous heating just to keep spacecraft systems functional. The RPS derives power from plutonium-238 decay to reliably provide both electric and thermal outputs for extreme conditions. It would power instruments such as an ice-penetrating radar for selecting drilling sites, spectrographs for the study of surface chemistry, and a submersible probe to search for microbial life in the ocean. Waste heat from RPS would provide anti-freeze to the components of the spacecraft and thereby permit long-term exploration. I strive to be curious, whether it’s trying to explore the oceanic depths of Europa, or finding creative ways to enhance RPS; Curiosity during this mission is key to exploration. Just like if Galileo Galilei hadn’t harnessed his curiosity on Jupiter, Europa wouldn’t have made it into space-exploration history.