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Europa has long been considered a possible home to some form of life because of the fact that it is covered with ice and believes to have water under its cold exterior.
New research has revealed that life would not be able to survive on its surface, due to the lack of atmosphere of the moon, it is exposed to severe radiation, but amino acids, which are the signature of life, can be kept up to 10 million years barely.
It was believed that NASA should dig meters into the surface to look for signs of life – which is not possible with today 's technology.
But digging just one centimeter is certainly in NASA's research means published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Dr. Tom Nordheim, a NASA scientist specializing in the habitability of icy worlds, said, "These findings indicate that future missions on the surface of Europe do not need "At mid and high latitudes, amino acids could persist at detectable levels only 1 to 3 centimeters below the surface of Europe over a period of 10 million years.
"In the more irradiated equatorial regions, however, this depth increases to several tens of centimeters."
NASA has two missions to Europa, one of the 53 confirmed moons of Jupiter, planned for the future.
] One is a flyby called Europa Clipper and will be launched in 2022, and a landing mission will follow two years later, says the giant space exploration.
When NASA announced that she would go to Europe, she said there are three goals of the potential mission: to find out if there is, or has ever been, life on Europa, evaluate whether the celestial body is habitable, and analyze the surface of the moon for future missions.
Agency's id in a statement: "Europa may hold the clues of one of NASA's long-standing goals – to determine if we are alone in the universe."
"The highest scientific purpose of the mission presented here is to seek" This mission would significantly advance our understanding of Europe as an oceanic world, even in the absence of any definite sign of life and would form the basis of future robotic exploration of Europe ". [19659014]
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