NASA Selects 9 Instruments for Mission to Europa

摘要

NASA announced the selection of nine instruments it plans to fly on a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, but agency officials were vague about whether the instruments, or the overall mission, could meet an aggressive schedule sought by some in Congress. NASA said May 26 the nine instrument concepts, selected from 33 proposals submitted by scientists last year, will be flown together on a spacecraft with the goal of determining whether Europa can support life, although not necessarily if the icy moon hosts life today. "All of these instruments are designed to increase our rather limited knowledge of Europa," Curt Niebur, Europa program scientist at NASA Headquarters, said during a briefing about the instrument selection. "They're doing that by helping us probe the big question, which is, 'Is Europa habitable?'" The nine instruments include cameras to provide high-resolution images of the moon's surface, magnetometers to measure the depth and salinity of the moon's subsurface ocean, a radar to probe Europa's icy crust, and spectrometers to determine the composition of the surface as well as material ejected by plumes.