NASA could find alien life on Jupiter’s moon by 2030, a new study claims

Scientists have revealed that NASA could confirm alien life by 2030 if it launches its $178 million spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon.

The American Space Agency will launch its Europa Clipper in October on its five-and-a-half voyage to Europa, where it will spend four years exploring the icy moon.

Now a new study has analyzed the instruments on board the craft and found that they are able to pick up a single living cell in a tiny grain of ice ejected from the moon’s oceans.

A team of researchers led by the University of Washington determined the instruments can detect microbes in one in hundreds of thousands of ice grains – and identify chemicals that are key components of life on Earth.

Lead author Fabian Klenner said: ‘For the first time we have shown that even a small part of the cell material can be identified by a mass spectrometer on board a spacecraft.

‘Our results give us greater confidence that future instruments will allow us to detect life forms similar to those on Earth, which we increasingly believe could be present on ocean moons.’

NASA chose to study Europa because it is rich in water and specific nutrients – all of which could mean the moon supports life.

Scientists have previously determined that for life to exist, a planet needs three main ingredients: temperatures that allow liquid water to exist; the presence of carbon-based molecules; and an energy input, such as sunlight.

And Europe seems to have them all.

A total of five spacecraft have visited the distant planetary body, but Clipper will have the most powerful instruments of any previous mission – and was developed with the aim of searching for life.

Now a new study has analyzed the instruments on board the craft and found that they are able to pick up a single living cell in a tiny grain of ice ejected from the moon’s oceans.

The new study focused on a common bacterium called Sphingopyxis alaskensis, which is found in the waters off the coast of Alaska.

Researchers chose this specimen because it is slammer than most modeled organisms and because it is able to survive in cold environments with scarce nutrients – similar characteristics to what life on Europa would face.

“They are extremely small, so in theory they could fit into ice grains ejected from an ocean world like Enceladus or Europa,” Klenner said.

The simulation appeared to include a scenario of Clipper’s SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA), which will scoop up the depicted ice grains and identify their chemistry.

‘SUDA is the only one capable of detecting salts in dust/ice grains. The speed and direction of the grains will tell SUDA their origin on the European surface,” NASA said in a statement.

The instrument will also be able to detect ions with negative charges, allowing it to pick up fatty acids and lipids.

“For me, it’s even more exciting to look for lipids or fatty acids than looking for building blocks of DNA, and the reason is that fatty acids seem to be more stable,” Klenner said.

Senior author Frank Postberg, professor of planetary sciences at Freie Universität Berlin, said: ‘With suitable instruments, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, it could be easier than we thought to find life or traces of life. it, on icy moons.

‘If there is natural life there and it would like to be locked up in ice grains from an environment such as an underground water reservoir.’

Europa has a diameter of 3,000 kilometers – about 90 percent of the diameter of Earth’s moon.

The main body of the Clipper is a massive 10-foot-tall propulsion module designed and built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

The spacecraft will be launched on a Musk company Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.