NASA pondering trip to Jupiter Moon

In one of my earlier posts, I vaguely described the thoughts of possible microbial life on Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons. Because I am fairly interested in this topic, I looked further into the details and came across NASA's preparation and blueprinting into what a trip to Europa, in order to look for these life-forms, would look like. Due to the many hints of a large ocean underneath the very thick icy crust, the possibility of extra-terrestrial life on Europa has raised dramatically as the leader to finally coming across a non-Earth life form.

For now, the go-to plan has been to send a vehicle, such as the Curiosity on Mars, that would obtain a drill and camera  to land on Europa's surface. The goal is to send this vehicle within the next decade. The start of this discussion has been published in the journal "Astrobiology", with many leading researcher's opinions and inputs, a very rough outline of how this vehicle and the plan to go there would look have been down since August. The lead contributor, Robert Pappalardo, quotes “Europa is the most likely place in our solar system beyond Earth to have life today, and a landed mission would be the best way to search for signs of life."  The article goes on to explain how probes in the 1980's orbited past Europa and how sending an actual vehicle would allow much more in-depth testing and observing on the moon's surface. According to Space.com this adventure will cost a hefty $2billion when it's planned to launch in 2021. The website goes on to explain that because of Europa's intense environment, the "clipper" that is sent there will have to be shielded so heavily that it will greatly affect the time and cost for the trip.

The process will obviously take quite a long time. The clipper has been planned to enter Jupiter's orbit, and do a couple dozen "flyby's" to first study Europa. After around two and a half years, then when ready it will attach itself to the surface and go from there. Apart from this, the rover would take about 6 years to even get to Jupiter.



Sources:
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2013.1003
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/08/nasa-ponders-life-seeking-mission-to-europa-moon/
http://www.space.com/18901-nasa-mission-jupiter-moon-europa.html