Europa Astrobiology Lander Mission Concept: Autonomous Surface Sampling

Europa, a moon of Jupiter, is a high-priority target for space exploration because of its potential to harbor life. A landed mission concept to collect and analyze samples for signs of life was developed over the past decade.

Operationally, a critical challenge for such a mission is that the surface environment at the spatial scale of the lander is not well known, requiring that such a mission be capable of acquiring samples in a wide range of surface conditions.

Furthermore, the 85.2-hour orbit of Europa around Jupiter limits direct-to-Earth communications to half the orbital period. Last, power constraints and charged-particle irradiation could limit the lifetime of such a mission to several months.

Lander prototype during field tests at Matanuska Glacier, Alaska (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Lander mission scenarios (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

This article describes an effort to develop sampling hardware and autonomous software to enable such a Europa surface mission. This multiyear effort leveraged development across multiple simulation and test-bed venues, culminating in a field campaign on the Matanuska Glacier, Alaska, USA, where a cross-disciplinary team demonstrated autonomous end-to-end sampling activities with representative lander hardware.

Astrobiology