NASA Europa Missions, projects and proposals for the 2020s |
NASA Europa Missions, projects and proposals for the 2020s |
Mar 5 2014, 12:53 AM
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#1
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Forum Contributor Group: Members Posts: 1374 Joined: 8-February 04 From: North East Florida, USA. Member No.: 11 |
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Jun 18 2015, 12:27 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 154 Joined: 8-June 04 Member No.: 80 |
I'm not complaining, but I'm wondering what this mission will accomplish that the Galileo mission didn't. Both spacecraft have a magnetometer, dust detector, cameras and UV instruments. The Europa mission will also conduct flybys rather than orbit Europa just like Galileo. With the exception of the radar and more advanced versions of the instruments Galileo had, what do scientists hope to get that they couldn't get from Galileo?
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Jun 21 2015, 09:58 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
what do scientists hope to get that they couldn't get from Galileo? One of the quirks of Europa's geography is that the crust preserves a record of tidal stresses on a global scale. The pattern of faults and grooves is like a fingerprint showing the history of fault creation as Europa's crust slowly rotates, decoupled from the sub ocean surface. In this regard, seeing a quarter, half, or even three quarters of the surface leaves our understanding significantly incomplete. On a world where, say, impact cratering was the only major contribution to surface morphology, that wouldn't be much of a problem. You could assume that the 3/4 you didn't see was about the same as the 1/4 you did see. But Europa's not that kind of place. Galileo offered a certain level of resolution for very tiny, select regions on Europa, which sampled Europa's terrain types to some degree, but did virtually nothing at global scale. The figures and tables here give you an idea of the coverage. http://lasp.colorado.edu/JUPITER/CH15/Ch15.html Where you see tiny rectangles on these maps, for example, http://lasp.colorado.edu/JUPITER/CH15/EuropaFootprintMap.jpg …you see how little of the surface was imaged at maximal or near-maximal resolution. In many areas, Europa has not been imaged at better than 5 km/pixel resolution. In summary, Galileo had the ability to take close-up images of any particular place on Europa, but because of the data limitations, couldn't provide a global survey. Re-flying a Galileo clone with the same instruments but unimpaired data transmission would have been an enormous boost to our understanding. Now, 20 years later, we're only planning the design of the mission that will finally begin to fill those gaps. But, as others have made clear, will be superior to a mere Galileo clone. |
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Jun 21 2015, 10:35 PM
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#4
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Member Group: Members Posts: 154 Joined: 8-June 04 Member No.: 80 |
Thanks everyone for all your replies
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