Joint Europa Mission (JEM): a multi-scale study of Europa to characterize its habitability and search for extant life

Abstract

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From planetary exploration goals to technology requirements

“…Several studies have already gone far into this definition, paving the way to a mission that should be ready to fly by the end of the 30's: the NASA Europa Lander SDT report (Hand et al 2017) describes a NASA lander mission with sophisticated payload for the detection of biosignatures in the surface and sub-surface. A white paper submitted to ESA in response to the Voyages 2050 call alternatively described a "Joint Europa Mission" (JEM) between NASA and ESA (Blanc et al 2020(Blanc et al , 2021a) combining an ESA orbiter-carrier with the same NASA lander, complemented by a special ESA sub-platform specializing in the analysis of surface samples in liquid phase. Titan: Understanding the complex world of Titan and its potential habitability is worth several missions, starting with the already selected DragonFly mission.…”

“…Once on the moon surface, the landers will have to perform their assigned science operations in extreme conditions of low temperature, and also of very harsh radiation environment in the case of Europa. Astrobiology-oriented missions will have to operate specific suites of science investigations based on sophisticated strategies to search for bio-signatures at the surfaces and sub-surfaces of ocean moons: see for instance Hand et al (2017); Blanc et al (2020) and Prieto-Ballesteros et al (2019.…”

Contamination analysis of Arctic ice samples as planetary field analogs and implications for future life-detection missions to Europa and Enceladus

“…Drilling the thick ice shell of Europa and Enceladus surface, as conceived in Europa Lander, Enceladus Orbilander Mission, and JEM 6 , 7 , 56 , will require core recovery strategies analogous to those used in terrestrial studies, although substantially more complicated logistically. Decontamination techniques using UV-C and chemical disinfectants are suggested by Task Group on the Forward Contamination of Europa 10 to sterilize hardware before the spacecraft launch to Europa.…”

The Salty Secrets of Icy Ocean Worlds

“…Demonstrating mechanisms for extensive material entrainment into the ice would also support the existence of brine reservoirs near Europa's surface, hypothesized to explain the chaotic terrains covering much of Europa's surface (Collins et al., 2000; Kattenhorn & Prockter, 2014; Schmidt et al., 2011; Steinbrügge et al., 2020). Such near‐surface brine reservoirs could themselves be abodes for life, and might be accessible by a future landed spacecraft (Blanc et al., 2020; Hand et al., 2017; Pappalardo et al., 2013).…”