Kourou (France) – The exploration of the icy moons of Jupiter by the European Space Agency’s “Juice” space probe, launched Thursday from the Kourou base in French Guiana, is a new stop in the search for habitable worlds outside the planet, as they hide their icy peaks. Beneath them are vast oceans of liquid water, which are supposed to provide a fertile environment for life forms.
These environments are so far from the sun that astronomers have long excluded them from the region of the solar system considered habitable, “which until recently stopped at Mars,” astrophysicist Athena Kostinis, who is among the science officials, told AFP. for the European probe.
The explorations of the Galileo probes (1995), which targeted Jupiter, and Cassini (2004), which orbited Saturn, pushed the boundaries of research that focused not on these gas giant planets, which are characterized as being inhospitable to life, but on their icy moons, Europa and Ganymede. for Jupiter and Enceladus and Titan for Saturn.
These moons are characterized by the presence of vast oceans of liquid water under their icy surface, knowing that water in its liquid form alone makes life possible on the surface of any celestial body.
“This is the first time that we will explore possible habitable places beyond the frost line,” says Nicolas Altobelli, responsible for the “Goss” probe from the European Space Agency, in an interview dating back to January made in Toulouse by the “Airbus” company that designed the probe. It is not possible to record the presence of liquid water on the surface of a planet or moon.
The next NASA mission, called Europa Clipper, will target Europe. As for the probe, “Joss”, it will focus on Ganymede. Joss is scheduled to enter the orbit of this moon in 2034, which is the largest moon in the solar system and the only one that has its own magnetic field that protects it from radiation.
Huge circumference
There are many characteristics that indicate the existence of a stable environment, which is another condition for the emergence and continuity of life forms, because “what matters is not only that the place is habitable, but that life is viable,” as Athena Costinis asserts.
And unlike space missions to Mars that seek traces of ancient, vanished life, the underlying goal of exploring icy moons is to search for environments that are still habitable, which Mars does not demonstrate.
Another requirement for the possibility of life to exist is the availability of an energy source. In the freezing temperatures of the Jupiter system, the energy source is not the sun but the gravity that Jupiter exerts on its moons and causes “tidal effects” similar to what happens on Earth with the moon.