first serious mission to find extraterrestrial life
A lander for Europa
Culberson is the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee with oversight of NASA's budget. And he wants to know if there's life on Europa as badly as any NASA scientist working on the Europa Multi-Flyby Mission.
Adding a lander to the mission would absolutely improve NASA's chances of discovering the presence, or absence, of life, which is why Culberson is pushing for the necessary funding to get a lander added to the mission.
"Honestly, if you're going to go all that way to determine if there's life on another world, why wouldn't you double-check it?" Culberson told Berger.
Earlier this month, during one of Culberson's regular check-ins with the mission scientists, he learned the latest details on the lander, which he relayed to Berger. Here's the gist, according to Ars Technica:
- The addition of a lander will prolong the mission launch an additional year from 2022 to 2023.
- Similar to the 2014 comet landing, a landing site will be chosen until the spacecraft has extensively studied the moon's surface.
- The lander will weigh about 500 pounds and be delivered to the surface by sky crane, similar to how the Curiosity Mars rover was set on the surface.
- Included in the 500-pound-limit, there's room for up to 66 pounds of instruments for scientific analysis, which will include a device for identifying complex biological molecules that could signify signs of life.
- The lander will also come with a scooper and sampling arm equipped with counter-rotating saw blades for shallow drilling into the icy surface to collect ice samples.
Ultimately, the scientists want to get the lander near a crevasse that is venting water vapor from the underground ocean, Berger reported. That way, the instruments can sniff for any signs of life that might be swimming or floating underneath.
NASA has yet to officially announce that they're sending a lander to Europa.