NASA Europa Robotic Mission Looking Good After Boosted 2016 Budget

NASA is working hard on a variety of scientific missions and has big plans to send a robotic mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. Europa has long been thought to be one of the most likely locations to hold life outside of the Earth in our solar system. NASA is gearing up to launch the mission by the mid 2020s thanks to a boosted budget that it received for 2016.

NASA requested $30 million for preliminary studies into a mission to Europa for the year that begins on October 30, 2015 and was granted that amount. That $30 million is in addition to the $100 million that Congress added to the NASA budget last year to begin design work for a Europa mission.

After getting the boosted budget, NASA was able to find a concept for the mission that is just right for the money at hand. JPL senior research scientist Robert Pappalardo said that in the past missions NASA had investigated were too small, too big, or too expensive. The concept mission that NASA has landed on is called the Clipper concept and this mission is just right in cost and scope.

Clipper consists of a spacecraft that orbits Jupiter and will make multiple flybys of Europa over a three-year period. During the primary mission of the spacecraft would make about 45 flybys of Europa's surface and dive deep into the radiation belts of Europa. Scientists believe that Europa has a liquid ocean under its icy surface that could hold life similar to the life found in the deepest parts of the ocean here on Earth. NASA recently remastered some older images of Europa in an effort to drum up public support for its mission plans.

SOURCE: Discovery