Oriented on making people closer

Europa, the moon of Jupiter is one of the most popular space objects for habitants of the earth. Recently scientists have paid more and more steadfast attention to it. Why?

Rector of Liverpool Hope University Monica Grady believes that there exists a developed extraterrestrial life.

Other scientists, without supporting such conviction at all, consider that there is a chance to find life on Europa. And all this is because this moon of Jupiter is covered by an ice layer. Its thickness reaches 24 km and, by some estimation, it can protect from solar radiation and falling asteroids no worse than the atmosphere.

And where is an ice, there can be liquid water either. And in water there is life.

NASA announced a start of a new mission to Europa by the space ship «Europa Clipper» in 2025 to conduct researches and to find out whether there can be a gas giant potentially habitable.

The spacecraft will be equipped by nine scientific devices, rolling cameras and spectrometers for reception of images of high resolution from the surface of the moon, magnetometer for measurement of force and magnetic field direction (it will provide guidance to the depth and salinity of the ocean) and a radar for definition of thickness of an ice crust over the ocean.

And the scientific community already speculates with might of what kind of life can be found on the moon of Jupiter. The most reserved assume that bacteria or microbes may exist on Europa.

But professor Grady is sure that these forms of life can be much more composite. Even it is more complex than what researchers hope to find out on Mars. «When it comes to the prospects of life outside the Earth, then almost there is always confidence that under the ice cover of Europa there is a life and it is not excluded that these living beings will be similar to octopuses».

Scientists are sure that we are not lonely in the Universe. And it is quite probable that life also exists in other places of the Milky Way. And also it is probable that this life will consist of the same elements, as we do.

Altyn ASHYROVA