Enceladus has all the raw materials for life, researchers say
Enceladus has all the raw materials for life, researchers say
Saturn's ocean moon, Enceladus, is attracting increasing attention in the search for life in our solar system. Most of what we know about Enceladus and its ice-covered ocean comes from the Cassini mission. Cassini ended its exploration of the Saturn system in 2017, but scientists are still working t...
I know that competition for funding for space missions is intense, but let's just land a probe on the damn thing and be done with it.
Drill through the ice, drop a sensor, send the data home.
I don't know enceladus, but europas ice layer is probably 20kms thick
I was thinking a chemical drill of sorts. A package of exothermic reactions to melt the way down. Then you'd actually need to drop an ultralong extending straw down (I admittedly don't know how to solve this one, but my material science/mechanical engineering isn't very strong) and slurp up a sample for onboard analysis. Otherwise you'd be limited to only those components you could fit into a transmitting sensor.
Damn someone made Barotrauma IRL