Europa Exploration Philosophy

Philip Horzempa

A Viking-class Europa Lander is a high-risk, high-cost venture. In its place, Europa should be explored by a series of low-cost scouts. These will be landers and small flyby craft. These missions will ascertain the nature of Europa’s surface at a scale of meters to centimeters. Some will search for the presence of organic molecules. All of them will precede a large Europa Lander.

Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)

Cite as: arXiv:2011.08849 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2011.08849v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)

Submission history

From: Philip Horzempa 

[v1] Tue, 17 Nov 2020 14:35:43 UTC (902 KB)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.08849

Astrobiology,