Hunt for alien life on Jupiter begins

In the past year humanity has landed on a comet, ventured to Pluto and discovered another planet which is so like our own it has been dubbed Earth 2.0.

But in the coming decades, space exploration is moving beyond charting the Solar System and will seriously start hunting for alien life.

This week the European Space Agency announced that is has joined forces with Airbus to develop a new space probe to look for extra-terrestrial existence on the icy moons of Jupiter.

It will launch in 2022 and head for the ocean-bearing worlds of Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Dubbed the Juice (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) spacecraft, the mission will look at whether the frozen worlds which surround gas giants could support extra-terrestrial life.

So far missions like Nasa’s Kepler have focussed on hunting for rocky planets like Earth, believing that they would be the best candidates for life. But the first images beamed back from Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft earlier this month suggest that icy outer planets and frozen moons could be geologically active and hold liquid water.

It is hoped that micro-organisms or even fish-like creatures may be present in deep-water hydrothermal vents known as 'black smokers' which are known to harbour life on Earth.

Dr Daniel Brown, an astronomy expert from Nottingham Trent University, said: "All our current exciting and fascinating space missions have been dealing with either understanding the origins of life and our Solar System or finding exoplanets that might host Earth-like planets.

"But, life doesn’t have to exist on planets like Earth, it could also have developed in oceans within icy moons around Jupiter like gas giants.

"Juice will be exploring the three Galilean moons of Jupiter thought to harbour oceans under their surface. It will give us a much better understanding what lies beneath the icy crust and how it could offer an environment for life to develop."

The probe will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket and spend seven and half years sling-shotting around Earth, Mars and Venus to pick up enough speed to get to the Jupiter system with as little fuel as possible.

For three and a half years, the spacecraft will sweep around the giant planet, exploring its turbulent atmosphere, enormous magnetosphere, and tenuous set of dark rings, as well as studying the icy moons, Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto.

All three of the planet-sized satellites are thought to have oceans of liquid water beneath their crusts and could provide key clues on the potential for such bodies to harbour habitable environments.

The probe will start with Callisto before making two flybys of Europa, where it will study the icy surface.

Dr Brown added: "At the moment we think Europa might be the most likely location to find life. Hopefully we would be able to pick up biomarkers on the surface where cracks on the ice mantle have allowed water from the internal ocean to appear.

"The lifeforms would then need to survive without any light under high pressure environments. Current research has indicated that there might be more oxygen present than initially expected, so it could not only support microorganisms but possibly fishlike creatures.”

The mission will culminate in a dedicated, eight-month tour around Ganymede, the first time any icy moon has been orbited by a spacecraft. And Ganymede is the only moon in the Solar System known to generate its own magnetic field so scientists are keen to work out how that is being achieved.

“Juice will address the question: are there current habitats outside Earth in the Solar System with the necessary conditions to sustain life?” said François Auque, Head of Space Systems at Airbus.

“After the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Titan… and even a comet, our engineers’ next challenge is to build this sophisticated spacecraft to explore the Jupiter system.”

The spacecraft will carry 10 instruments covering a wide range of measurements techniques (optical, sub-millimetre, radar, magnetic electric, plasma and particle sensors).

Weighing five and a half tonnes, Juice will be powered by a large 97 m² solar generator, the largest ever sent into space.

“Jupiter and its icy moons constitute a kind of mini-Solar System in their own right, offering European scientists and our international partners the chance to learn more about the formation of potentially habitable worlds around other stars," added Dmitrij Titov, ESA's Juicd Study Scientist.