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NORTH LOGAN — In a few years, NASA will launch a new mission in the hopes of answering an existential question humans have asked for years: Are we alone out there?
The mission, called Europa Clipper, will send a spacecraft to one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, to discover if it was once habitual to life. Utah State University's Space Dynamics Lab is now helping NASA answer that question, officials announced Thursday. The university's lab built and tested an integral piece of the mission, the thermal management system to the mapping instrument of the spacecraft, that will chart the surface of Europa.
The Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa, or MISE, is tasked with mapping the moon's thick and icy surface to find the warmest spots. USU's technology will help keep the mapping device cooled down so it can function properly.
"Because MISE will image Europa in the infrared wavelength, it's critical that the instrument remains cooler than the moon's surface materials," explained Curtis Bingham, the Space Dynamics Laboratory program manager for the project, in a news release.
The Radiator Cryocooler Mount Assembly, which the lab provided to NASA, uses technologies that have been proven to be useable in space and that have been "integrated into a structure that can survive launch vibrations and Europa's harsh radiation environment," Bingham said.
But why do scientists believe there's a chance the moon is habitable to life? Water.
Studies have shown that under Europa's icy layer there is a large ocean and it could have more water than Earth.
"Among the chief elements that make life possible is water," according to a news release from Utah State's space lab. "Water provides the dissolved nutrients for organisms to consume, carries essential chemicals within living cells, and allows cells to eliminate waste products."
NASA's mission to Europa isn't tasked with finding life on the moon, but instead investigating whether or not its conditions are suitable for life to have survived there.
"To understand life in the solar system, Europa is a key place to explore," Robert Pappalardo, scientist with NASA's project, said in a news release. "To understand its strange geology, its interior ocean and how that may connect to life, we need to go there and explore it — with the Europa Clipper mission."
