Is Life Possible on a Jupiter Moon? NASA Goes to Investigate

A view of Jupiter's moon Europa created from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990's, according to NASA, obtained by Reuters May 14, 2018. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute/ Handout via Reuters
A view of Jupiter's moon Europa created from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990's, according to NASA, obtained by Reuters May 14, 2018. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute/ Handout via Reuters
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Is Life Possible on a Jupiter Moon? NASA Goes to Investigate

A view of Jupiter's moon Europa created from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990's, according to NASA, obtained by Reuters May 14, 2018. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute/ Handout via Reuters
A view of Jupiter's moon Europa created from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990's, according to NASA, obtained by Reuters May 14, 2018. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute/ Handout via Reuters

Is there anywhere else in our solar system that could support life? An imposing NASA probe is due to lift off on Monday on a five-and-a-half-year journey to Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons, to take the first detailed step toward finding out.

The Europa Clipper mission will allow the US space agency to uncover new details about the moon, which scientists believe could hold an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface.

Liftoff is scheduled for "no earlier than" Monday, October 14, from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard a powerful SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, NASA said in a statement.

"Europa is one of the most promising places to look for life beyond Earth," said NASA official Gina DiBraccio at a news conference last month.

The mission will not look directly for signs of life but will instead look to answer the question: Does Europa contain the ingredients that would allow life to be present?

If it does, another mission would then have to make the journey to try and detect it.

"It's a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago," like Mars, Europa Clipper program scientist Curt Niebur told reporters last month, "but a world that might be habitable today, right now."

The probe is the largest ever designed by NASA for interplanetary exploration.

It is 30 meters wide when its immense solar panels -- designed to capture the weak light that reaches Jupiter -- are fully extended.

- Primitive life? -

While Europa's existence has been known since 1610, the first close-up images were taken by the Voyager probes in 1979, which revealed mysterious reddish lines crisscrossing its surface.

The next probe to reach Jupiter's icy moon was NASA's Galileo probe in the 1990s, which found it was highly likely that the moon was home to an ocean.

This time, the Europa Clipper probe will carry a host of sophisticated instruments, including cameras, a spectrograph, radar, and a magnetometer to measure its magnetic forces.

The mission will look to determine the structure and composition of Europa's icy surface, its depth, and even the salinity of its ocean, as well as the way the two interact -- to find out, for example, if water rises to the surface in places.

The aim is to understand whether the three ingredients necessary for life are present: water, energy and certain chemical compounds.

If these conditions exist on Europa, life could be found in the ocean in the form of primitive bacteria, explained Bonnie Buratti, the mission's deputy project scientist.

But the bacteria would likely be too deep for the Europa Clipper to see.

And what if Europa isn't habitable after all? "That also opens up a whole wealth of questions: Why did we think this? And why is it not there?" said Nikki Fox, an associate administrator at NASA.

- 49 flybys -

The probe will cover 2.9 billion kilometers (1.8 billion miles) during its journey to Jupiter, with arrival expected in April 2030.

The main mission will last another four years.

The probe will make 49 close flybys over Europa, coming as close as 25 kilometers (16 miles) above the surface.

It will be subjected to intense radiation -- the equivalent of several million chest x-rays on each pass.

Some 4,000 people have been working on the $5.2 billion mission for around a decade.

NASA says the investment is justified by the importance of the data that will be collected.

If our solar system turns out to be home to two habitable worlds (Europa and Earth), "think of what that means when you extend that result to the billions and billions of other solar systems in this galaxy," said Niebur, the Europa Clipper program scientist.

"Setting aside the 'Is there life?' question on Europa, just the habitability question in and of itself opens up a huge new paradigm for searching for life in the galaxy," he added.

The Europa Clipper will operate at the same time as the European Space Agency's (ESA) Juice probe, which will study two other moons of Jupiter -- Ganymede and Callisto.



Japan's 400,000-follower 'Insta-gran' Dies Aged 97

(FILES) This file picture taken on January 16, 2018 shows Kimiko Nishimoto posing next to a picture of her on the sliding window of her house in the western Japanese city of Kumamoto. (Photo by Behrouz MEHRI / AFP)
(FILES) This file picture taken on January 16, 2018 shows Kimiko Nishimoto posing next to a picture of her on the sliding window of her house in the western Japanese city of Kumamoto. (Photo by Behrouz MEHRI / AFP)
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Japan's 400,000-follower 'Insta-gran' Dies Aged 97

(FILES) This file picture taken on January 16, 2018 shows Kimiko Nishimoto posing next to a picture of her on the sliding window of her house in the western Japanese city of Kumamoto. (Photo by Behrouz MEHRI / AFP)
(FILES) This file picture taken on January 16, 2018 shows Kimiko Nishimoto posing next to a picture of her on the sliding window of her house in the western Japanese city of Kumamoto. (Photo by Behrouz MEHRI / AFP)

A Japanese great-grandmother with 400,000 Instagram followers who shot to fame for her goofy self-portraits after taking up photography aged 72 has died, her son said on Thursday.

Kimiko Nishimoto, who died this week at the age of 97, told AFP in a 2018 interview that "you can take photos no matter how old you get".

"Wherever it is, in your house, outside, or in your bed, you can do it. That is the nice thing about a camera," she said.

Dubbed the "selfie queen" by Japanese media, Nishimoto's posts showed her in various candid poses -- from riding a broom like Harry Potter to imitating an off-duty sumo wrestler on their fifth beer of the night.

"Our mother always created her work with a smile," a post from her son Kazutami Nishimoto said on her Instagram account.

"We are deeply grateful to everyone who visited her photography exhibitions held across the country, to those who shared warm words of encouragement through Instagram... and to all who supported her warmly throughout her journey."

Nishimoto's son teaches photography classes, which his mother started taking in retirement.

"Though she began photography at the age of 72, she was blessed with countless encounters, which enriched this third chapter of her life tremendously," he said.

Nishimoto appeared on national television as her online following grew and was interviewed by major news outlets.

But her more out-there visual scenarios were also the cause of some confusion over the years.

One snap -- showing her wrapped in a garbage bag, as if she had been discarded -- drew criticism from people who didn't know she was involved in its set-up.

"It's not like ideas just suddenly pop into my head but wherever I go I think about what it would be fun to dress up as in that place," she said in 2018.