NASA Goes First Class for Europa

There’s an old saying that the clothes make the man. In planetary exploration, the instrument suite makes the mission. Fewer and simpler instruments can enable a lower cost mission but at the cost of restricting the richness of the scientific investigations.

Jupiter’s moon Europa has been a priority to explore because there’s good evidence that its vast ocean, hidden beneath an icy crust, may have the conditions needed to enable life. However, NASA’s managers have struggled to define a mission that is both compelling and affordable. Over the last several years, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) have rethought the entire approach to exploring Europa. They started with a bare bones list of just three must have instruments (with a longerlist of optional desired instruments). Theire
breakthrough was to plan a mission that would orbit Jupiter and make many brief swoops past Europa before swinging back out of the high radiation zone. NASA now has a concept that's affordable.