Europa, Jupiter's frigid moon, may not look very welcoming from the outside. But it's what's inside that counts, and scientists are pretty sure there's a liquid ocean beneath that icy shell. Europa could be prime real estate for simple alien lifeforms, and sometime in the 2020s, we're going to send a spacecraft there.
Although NASA's mission to Europa won't directly look for life, it will carry nine instruments that will tell us whether life could survive on Europa. The mission has just moved from the concept phase to development, NASA announced last night.
“Today we're taking an exciting step from concept to mission, in our quest to find signs of life beyond Earth,” said John Grunsfeld in a press statement.
On Twitter, NASA systems engineer Bobak Ferdowsi (a.k.a “Mohawk Guy”), sums up our feelings on this quite nicely:
