The “follow the water” rule still drives scientists to search for extraterrestrial life, prompting them to send a spacecraft to explore the “icy moons” orbiting Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.
Many of these moons are so far away that oceans are suspected to exist beneath their icy shells, and are believed to be potentially habitable on them,” the paper says.Economist“.
A new spacecraft is planned to launch from the Grove base in French Guiana to Jupiter carrying the spacecraft “Jose” with the aim of inspecting some of these moons up close.
Next Thursday, Jose, or what the European Space Agency calls the “Icy Moon Explorer,” will begin its longest journey since it won’t reach Jupiter until 2031, about eight years from now.
Goose will look at three moons, Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, all of which are believed to have subsurface oceans.
The probe will focus on Ganymede, which, despite being a moon, is larger than Mercury, and its surface ocean may contain more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.
The probe’s cameras will be on Ganymede’s surface, adding more detail to limited-resolution maps, while ice-penetrating radar will probe several kilometers below its surface.
And “Joss” is not the only probe on its way to Jupiter, the US space agency (NASA) will launch “Europa Clipper” next year, which will be on a fast track and arrive seven months ahead of the European Space Agency’s probe. But it will focus more on the moon “Europa” and not Ganymede.
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