The science of Europa Clipper and research from the red planet

An ocean world and the grander questions

Following its launch on Oct. 14, Europa Clipper is embarking on its long journey to explore Jupiter's moon and determine its potential habitability.

Once the spacecraft reaches Jupiter's orbit, it will perform 49 successive flybys furthering our understanding of the moon's geophysical and geochemical properties.

Paul Byrne, associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at University of Washington in St. Louis, said that life requires three things: water, some sort of organic chemistry and an energy source.

In the case of Europa, scientists strongly suspect the presence of Europa's liquid water ocean, organic compounds that may be causing the orange striations within the ice shells, as well as some sort of energy source that may enable past or present life.

Byrne said studying Europa has its challenges due to Jupiter's strong radiation and magnetic fields, but the clipper's close flybys will paint a more comprehensive picture than scientists currently have. The spacecraft will be able measure magnetic fields, tell whether there is a liquid ocean and gauge its thickness, potential plumes and more.

"From there, we can begin to ask more serious questions like, 'Could there be an environment deep inside this moon on the ocean floor, where the rock is direct contact with water?'" Byrne said. "'Is there some energy source that may be akin to the kinds of hydrothermal systems we see deep in the ocean floors on Earth that potentially are supporting environments where there could be life?'"

As we discover more worlds and planets in our solar system, we have yet to find a world quite like ours. When trying to understand the grander questions planetary scientists often ask about life beyond Earth, Byrne said Europa is arguably the best place to look for answers.

"Clipper is not going to answer all the questions," Byrne said. "No one mission will ever do that. But after Clipper is finished, we will understand Europa truly is a world, then we're ready to start answering the next set of questions that may ultimately see us land on the surface, or a rover on the surface, or perhaps when they even get through the shell into the ocean beneath."

Water pools and the rolling rovers

Could clues of life on Mars be more related to Earth as we know it? NASA Mars scientists recently proposed habitable pocket-sized water pools beneath the frozen water on the planet's surface that may be able to sustain life.

Amy Williams, an astrobiologist at the University of Florida and a member of NASA's Mars Science, said that the computer modeled research suggested there could be water pockets approximately one inch in diameter that could sustain life by similar processes seen on Earth.

"It would provide enough protection from things like the radiation environment on Mars to protect the things that are in that little pool of water, while also being shallow enough that if there were organisms in there and if they could use light energy the way that plants and bacteria do on Earth via photosynthesis, those organisms would actually receive enough of an energy flux to perform photosynthesis as we understand it on Earth," Williams said.

As scientists model research on Earth, our two favorite rovers are rolling along Mars to understand the planet's climate history.

While Curiosity is slowly roving these days, it continues to climb the Gale crater to collect data on the rocks and formation to uncover Mars' massive drying event. Similarly, Perserverance has been occupied scaling steep slopes to analyze the rocks of Jezero Crater.

"We're kind of getting into this threshold where we're starting to explore sort of a very different era on Mars than we've explored before with this rover," Williams said.

Aside from pocket-sized water homes and crater exploration, Perserverance also recently detected a terrestrially unique "googly eye" eclipse. Williams said this phenomenon doesn't follow our certain concept of what a solar eclipse looks like, due to the relative size and irregular positioning of Mars and its moons.

As scientists uncover new findings and the rovers stay curious, Williams said there's lifetimes of backlogged and new research to explore.

"I think we're getting into a really unique landscape and geology that we just haven't really explored before. And I think it'll give us a lot of insight into both, you know, the samples we want to collect from our sample return, and maybe where future missions would want to explore as well," Williams said.

Voting in person, by mail, and from space?

It's election day in the United States, and NASA said the four astronauts in orbit intend to cast their absentee ballots from the International Space Station.