Feb 18 2009

From The Space Library

NASA’s JPL announced that NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) had reached an agreement concerning priorities for outer-planet missions. NASA and ESA had merged separate concepts to create two missions—the Europa Jupiter System Mission and the Titan Saturn System Mission. NASA and ESA had decided to implement the Europa mission first, since it was the more technically feasible of the two missions. For the Europa mission, NASA and ESA would each provide one of two robotic orbiters. The probes would conduct studies of unprecedented detail of Jupiter and its moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Launching in 2020 on separate vehicles, the probes would reach the Jupiter system in 2026, gathering data for at least three years. NASA’s probe would spend at least a year investigating Europa for signs of life and producing a global map, to prepare for a future mission that would land on Europa. Simultaneously, ESA’s probe would investigate the interior and the surface of Ganymede, to help understand the formation and evolution of the Jovian system. For the Titan Saturn System Mission, NASA would provide an orbiter, and ESA would provide a lander and a research balloon. The Titan mission, which required significant study and technological development to overcome several technical challenges, was not as far along in the planning stage. The agreement to pursue the missions was the culmination of years of debate, involving scientists, space professionals, and space enthusiasts, who had long found icy satellites like Europa intriguing. Scientists believed that satellites of this type—common in the outer solar system—have a potentially habitable environment.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “NASA and ESA Prioritize Outer Planet Missions,” JPL news release 18 February 2009, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2035 (accessed 7 March 2011); John Johnson Jr., “It’s All Systems Go for Europa,” Los Angeles Times, 19 February 2009.

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