Man the harpoons
There be Whales.........
Boffins have spotted huge plumes of water vapour erupting from the frozen surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, raising the possibility that it could one day be inhabited by humans. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA and ESA scientists were able to spot a number of distinctive geysers near the moon's south pole, something no- …
scientists were able to spot a number of distinctive geysers near the moon's south pole, something no-one has ever seen on Europa.
And by a curious coincidence there are currently also a number of distinguished European geezers near the Earth's south pole: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25354839
> the possibility that [Europa] could one day be inhabited by humans
Yeah, in a situation where charged particles are zipping around fast enough to ionise water... No. It's not going to be a holiday destination with a radiation environment like that.
I truly would love to know what's under that ice crust, but I guess a manned mission is out of the question.
Even if there were no radiation, Humans are ridiculously vulnerable to water when it doesn't do exactly what they want it to do. As natural features gone wrong go, water is the biggest killer of Humans on the planet.
Water on a foreign planet, plus radiation, plus all the other general challenges of space mean finding water there is exponentially more valuable academically than practically.
I'm glad it's there and I'm glad we know it is there, that's how science works and all, but saying it increases the potential for manned missions is like saying that finding a spark plug laying in the forest increases your chances of successfully building and racing your own F1 car. The chances are increased mathematically, but the measurable effect is zero.
invading Earth for our water O_o could have saved themselves a lot of bother.
(Of course they could have harvested direct from the Oort cloud too).
...
Hmmm, maybe global warming /is/ a myth and the real reason sea levels are rising by a few mm a year is the Aliens have found an alternate source!
My guess is that it's too faint to get any spectroscopic analysis done from Earth let alone the tiny concentrations of the other stuff floating around in the water.
ESA's JUICE mission which is scheduled for 2022 will perform detailed analyses of the Galilean moons including trying to get thicknesses of their crusts and in Europa's case identifying organic molecules on the surface to see if they are anything other than products of UV light on methane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_Icy_Moons_Explorer
"Sub-Constable, Gorthak the Slimelord is breaking out of his ice prison on the Europa Supermax moon!!"
"Great stars of Huytez!! Have the sentry robots failed!??!"
"Gorthak has enveloped them all sir!! We need reinforcements!!
"The nearest starmada is 14 dulnops away! Sending priority reroute order now!! Evacuate surviving personnel and meet the relief column in the Oort Cloud at the newly cleared Ison hyperjump landing zone!! What about collateral losses!??!"
"Doubtless Gorthak will hunger and travel to the nearest inhabited planet, Sol 3. 7 billion inhabitants sir!!"
"What, Sol 3?? You mean those shaved simians who worship Simon Cowell??! Whew! For a second I thought we had a crisis going...."
"Why can't we send one to Europa to basically melt its way through the ice, then fire a submarine probe down there?"
Research is still ongoing. One big problem is contaminating the samples.
Wouldn't do to introduce Earth bacteria into the environment there and skew any test results.
And let's not forget the Russian ice probe for an Antarctic lake, where the samples were heavily contaminated with kerosene from the probe.