Simple low cost lander mission to Europa.

[Exoscientist]

 

 The Europa Clipper mission will be an orbiter mission to Europa to be launched on the Falcon Heavy in the 2024 time frame.  But an actual lander mission to Europa could also be lauched in the same time frame on a Falcon Heavy. Having both orbiter and lander missions at the same time would be as revolutionary for planetary space science as were the Viking missions to Mars.

Can we adapt the Antarctica IceCube Neutrino Observatory drilling technique to explore the subice oceans of Europa?
https://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/01/can-we-adapt-antarctica-icecube.html

  Bob Clark

[Beamer]

Why hurry and take unnecessary risks? It's not going anywhere.

The ultimate answer is going to be "No, there's no funding". NASA decided based on the 2013 decadal survey that Europa wasn't going to be a priority for now (instead focusing on Mars). This year's review may change that but that's never going to be on time for a 2024 launch. Keep in mind Clipper has been in development since 2013 with the design going as far back as 2011 and the availability of funding coming from the 2003 decadal survey. That's 21 years from funding to launch. And the only reason it got funded at all after 2013 was because of Senator Culberson's clever trickery, otherwise it would have been 30+ years. That money is already spent and even if there was any left it would not be available for additional Europa missions AFAIK (Culberson's efforts only forced NASA to one Europa mission).

If this year's survey earmarks Europa, we might see a lander mission in the next decade, but funding and designing a lander mission in 1 year by a government organization, I'm sure you know as well as anyone that's going to be a pipe dream. Even if it can be done 'relatively cheap', it's still going to be 'relatively hard', and that's probably an understatement.

 

[Nuke]

ask again when starship is flying. thats going to unlock destinations and fancy missions all over the system. 

a lander with a tethered ice probe (and it could be powered just with radiothermal heaters) seems viable. the more tether you got the deeper you can go. not sure if you could drill deep enough to get into the under ice ocean but you could get some good data out of it.  id probibly also facilitate a system for collecting samples from the sides of the bore hole and winch them up to the lander for analysis. 

Edited January 17, 2023 by Nuke

[kerbiloid]

Electronic vacuum tubes are resistant to radiation, and also can melt through any ice layer, cuz they hot.

Spoiler

 

Edited January 18, 2023 by kerbiloid

[Shpaget]

Even with your overoptimistic scaling of power requirements (I'm almost certain you can't just scale linearly with cross section) how do you propose to pipe 50 kW through a 6 cm bore over 15 km (in addition to data link). Have you done any back of the envelope calculation on mass of that wire/pipe/hose?

[Vl3d]

Why can't we design a mission like this in KSP?

[Gargamel]

11 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Why can't we design a mission like this in KSP?

What’s stopping you?  I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t pick an analogous moon/planet in game, or mod one in, build a similar craft and send it on its way.   

[Vl3d]

Just now, Gargamel said:

What’s stopping you?  I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t pick an analogous moon/planet in game, or mod one in, build a similar craft and send it on its way.   

There are no underground oceans and we can't melt or break through the ice.

[Gargamel]

4 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

There are no underground oceans and we can't melt or break through the ice.

Well there’s your answer.  
 

Now back to the discussion of the real life mission…

[Nuke]

On 1/18/2023 at 4:44 AM, Shpaget said:

Even with your overoptimistic scaling of power requirements (I'm almost certain you can't just scale linearly with cross section) how do you propose to pipe 50 kW through a 6 cm bore over 15 km (in addition to data link). Have you done any back of the envelope calculation on mass of that wire/pipe/hose?

you have a slug of plutonium or whatever moderated by heavy water. you simply open a valve, let the water boil off and your probe commences a fissioning. then just slacken the line. see: the china syndrome. 

granted there is a fair bit of nuclear engineering to do. 

i figure the bore would be its own section made as simple as possible, just a dumb slug of hot stuff. your sensor package could be on a small tether climbing robot that can ride the cable. and it could just be statically fixed a few meters above the bore, perhaps powered by a tec at the tail end of the bore between the hot metal and the boiling off liquid. but being able to climb lets you move samples to a more robust tester. and of course it would be full of cameras and other small sensors.  

Edited January 26, 2023 by Nuke

[Vl3d]

All the solutions are not good, there is very high pressure in the hole, the water / ice would just rush back in and freeze solid. You also need to put some support structure to keep the channel open.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Vl3d

[kerbiloid]

The hole should not be permanent.

It should melt down, then melt up.

The heat source is the fission powerplant.

It doesn't need a remote control, it should just swim several times around the core, following the floor and the ceiling and avoiding collisions.

It doesn't need its scientific tools anymore after that, so they can be a part of ballast.

So, it should enable the nuke, melt down through the ice, and start swimming.
After that, it should get up to the ceiling, drop the instrumental compartment together with nuclear powerplant, and start melting up through the ice with the heat of the fission core of the former nuclear plant.

On reaching the surface, it should drop the fission core and let it melt down through the ice again, leaving the loot compartment floating/frozen on the surface.

While doing this, while floating at the ceiling, it should release several sinking explosive charges (equipped with ballast) to listen them through the ocean water.
While floating at the bottom, it should release several explosive charges (equipped with floaters) to listen them through the ocean water, too.

On the surface, the seismic probes should listen all these explosions as well.

[Nuke]

i wonder what you can do with vlf radio. submarines use that for global communication while submerged. bandwidth would be very low, on the order of bytes a second. it would need to gather as much data as it can store and then just float around transmitting for months. not sure how much ice that can get through, and you need to trail a long antennae for that. if you can avoid recovery entirely that greatly simplifies the mission. i have doubts that you could carry enough tether to break through the ice. and a tether also introduces complexity and possible points of failure. 

 

[kerbiloid]

But why should it have a need to communicate?

Spoiler

 

Like this, but with proximity sensors instead of the contact ones, and with a nuke plant onboard instead of the recharging pod.

[Nuke]

because you need stock footage for future episodes of "extreme ice fishing: europa"

[Shpaget]

On 1/26/2023 at 1:51 AM, Nuke said:

you have a slug of plutonium or whatever

Op considered nuclear option and quickly dismissed it. His focus is on solar energy, I'm just working within those constraints.

[kerbiloid]

48 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

His focus is on solar energy,

Insolation,, W/m2, 5 times farther from the Sun (thus, requiring > 25 times greater solar panel area) compared to the total heat capacity of the ice depth, leaves no chance without a good nuke.

[Shpaget]

Agreed, but not my idea to use solar.

[Nuke]

using a radiothermal heater, or even a full blown reactor, greatly simplifies the mission.

anyway i was doing some light reading on vlf, and im not sure its viable to get through europa's crust. vlf can only penetrate a few meters through sea water (and also why its used on submarines). though i did find this. if there are any voodoo practitioners (read radio engineers)  out there, id love to hear what you have to say on the matter.

i also suspect that the purity of the ice matters a great deal. if it contains contaminants they could provide insulating layers that block radio waves  (or worse what happens if you hit a rock on your way down). i suspect you would need to do some analysis of the ice before you can actually plan an ocean penetrating mission. 

another idea i have is that if you can somehow keep the ice from closing the shaft behind the bore you could maybe do some laser communication through the shaft, treating it as a wide fiber optic of sorts. or perhaps dropping a string of repeaters behind the bore. 

Edited January 29, 2023 by Nuke