NASA Fund For Two Phase Europa Mission, Increased By House Bill

The Congress has reportedly told the White House to provide a realistic funding profile to investigate Jupiter's Moon Europa further. Recently, a new study by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has detected that the icy moon may have an Earth like chemical balance that can sustain life.

NASA has been cautious of sending a mission to Jupiter, in spite of the planetary science community's wishes, because of the associated high cost that could be over the tune of $1 billion. In addition, the NASA budget under the Obama government doesn't give priority to planetary science, and the space organization prefers keeping most of its robotic solar system expedition to Mars. NASA feels that since Mars is easier to reach, it wants to explore the Red Planet further for future missions involving humans.

However, according to a report, Congress is keener about planetary science. In fact John Culberson, who is the House Appropriations subcommittee chairman with jurisdiction over NASA's budget, is enthusiastic about exploring Europa. Additionally, even when the space organization didn't ask for Europa funds, Culberson was directing money to the researchers at JPL.  NASA had asked for only a sum of $45 million for Europa funding between the 2013 and 2016 fiscal years, however Congress allocated $395 million. Furthermore, the space agency requested $49.6 million for Europa funding in the fiscal year 2017, but this week Culberson's committee released a house House appropriations bill that proposes $260 million for mission development and planning.

The congressman would like to send a lander to Europa's surface as a part of the mission, which would subsequently allow researchers to better observe the oceans below. In fact if the lander touches base near a fissure, then the ocean can be sampled too. However, the main difficulty of such a mission would be delivering both a lander and an orbital spacecraft on a single rocket as it would be challenging. Therefore, as a part of the new House bill the mission to Europa will be divided into two phases, first sending an orbiter which will analyze the harsh radiation environment near the moon and relay the data back to earth. Following the in depth study and assessment of the information, the researchers will decide which place on Europa's surface would be the best for landing the lander and it will be sent two year later, as the second part of the mission,

"We have increased funding for planetary programs and made sure we are going to complete the incredibly important mission to Europa that the planetary decadal survey mapped out because of the very high likelihood that life will be discovered in those oceans," John Culberson said."This will be a transformative moment in the history of humanity and the country." NASA had not officially approved a lander in its documents about the Europa mission, and has maintained that the mission would take place somewhere in the 2020s. However, the House bill is more specific and has given the time frames as 2022 for the orbiter launch and 2024 for the lander launch. Senior official from JPL have confirmed those dates are achievable. In addition, the bill states that NASA's budget for fiscal year 2018 will include a five year funding profile to back the two launches.