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HU professor gets 100k grant to explore EuropaNov 01, 2012 (Daily Press (Newport News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Locked away miles beneath the frozen ocean surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, life could be percolating. That's the tantalizing premise that drives planetary scientist William B. Moore of Hampton University. "In my opinion, it's the most exciting place in the solar system to go look," said Moore. "I take a look at Mars, and I see a dead place. I look at Europa, and I see a whole lot of water." The added possibility of active volcanoes erupting deep beneath all that water, he said, raises the odds that Europa could be a liquid cradle of life. "It's not going to be a place where you're going to set up colonies, I don't think," Moore said. "But certainly it's an interesting place to explore." Moore is one of a team of scientists recently awarded a $100,000 grant to do just that. NIAC, or the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, is funding their research into technology to send autonomous submarine gliders to Europa that are capable of piercing the moon's thick crust of ice, then swimming around in the liquid ocean beneath. Moore is co-investigator with the Exploration of Under-Ice Regions with Ocean Profiling Agents (EUROPA) project, along with Leigh McCue and Craig Woolsey, aerospace engineers at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Europa is one of four Jovian moons discovered about 400 years ago by famed Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. In 1995, the Galileo space probe arrived for a closer look and found that Europa is a thick, icy shell blanketing a liquid ocean surrounding a core of solid rock. The surface temperature is about 100 degrees above absolute zero, said Moore, or minus 279 degrees F. Yet images from the Galileo probe indicate iceberg-like formations have slid around on that surface over time, suggesting episodes when portions of the frozen shell began to thaw, he said. The heat needed for such thaws could have come from local volcanic activity beneath the surface, he said, or from gravitational tugs from Europa's orbiting sister moons and from Jupiter, itself. Those tugs could cause Europa's frozen mantle to flex in a tidal action, breaking and shifting the ice until broken blocks rubbed together in enough friction to generate heat. "These are some of the things we'd love to get down on the surface and explore," said Moore. He and his teammates have this academic year to brainstorm ideas on how to do it. According to the project website, the primary goals of EUROPA are to develop a preliminary design for the spacecraft to journey to Jupiter as well as two types of robotic explorers to deploy once there: a "cryobot" capable of penetrating ice estimated to be 15 miles thick or more, and a "hydrobot," or free-swimming robotic glider. The project will also look at technology for satellites to relay information back to Earth. Moore said the undersea glider technology will build on submarine crafts used today to explore under the Arctic ice. NIAC began in 1998 to seek out and foster visionary aerospace and space science concepts for future missions, some of which might not be feasible for decades. According to NIAC, the "enabling technologies" and science required might not even exist yet. Each year, the agency grants $100,000 to $500,000 for one- or two-year projects for "audacious but credible" innovation, according to NIAC director Robert Cassanova. This year, 28 new projects were selected in a competitive, peer-review process. Moore said Europa has long been a high-priority research target for NASA, in part because there are potentially far more Europas in the universe than Earths. "Earth is a pretty special place at where it is in the solar system," said Moore. "Just the right distance from the sun, where water is liquid pretty much all the time, interacting with rocks and volcanoes -- all the stuff that life depends on. We've been looking for the last 30 or 40 years ... for planets sitting at just the right magical distance from their star. Turns out, that's a pretty hard condition to meet." But life-generating energy on moons like Europa can come from tidal sources that are more flexible and forgiving, he said: "You don't have to be at that magic spot -- you just need big neighbors." One of Europa's neighbors is the moon Io, the most active volcanic body in the solar system, he said. Even Earth has volcanoes erupting under its seas, Moore said, "and around those things, all kinds of crazy life: tube worms, crazy crabs, all kinds of shrimp. If those things are going on under Europa -- wow." ___ (c)2012 the Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) Visit the Daily Press (Newport News, Va.) at www.dailypress.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |