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If extraterrestrial life exists on Jupiter's moon Europa, instead of deploying probes to drill past its ice shell to look for aliens in the ocean below, one might just go fossil-hunting on the icy surface.
"A prospector sent there could possibly find extraterrestrial life within our lifetimes," suggested planetary scientist Richard Greenberg at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at Tucson.
Europa, which is roughly the size of Earth's moon, is enveloped by a global ocean that may be about 100 miles deep (160 km). This ocean is overlain by an icy crust of unknown thickness, although some estimates are that it could be only a few miles thick.
Since wherever there is water on Earth there is a chance of life, for many years scientists have entertained the notion that this Jovian moon could support extraterrestrials. Recent findings even suggest its ocean could be loaded with oxygen, enough to support millions of tons worth of marine life like the type that exists on Earth.
To see if any kind of life actually evolved on Europa, scientists have proposed missions to drill through its outer shell, perhaps using heat to melt through the ice, whirring blades to clear away rocks and robot subs to explore the ocean.
"With that vision in mind, NASA has a multi-staged plan, first with a Europa orbiter scheduled for 18 years from now, and 10 or 20 years after that, a lander to see what the surface is like, and then maybe a generation later, hopefully we can figure out how to drill all the way down through the ice," Greenberg noted.
He recently wrote a book, "Unmasking Europa," which touched upon how one might search for life on the Jovian moon.
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