Europa

March 7, 2054

I still haven't been able to help the team. I understand the concern, but at this point it feels like I am being babied. Not for nothing it doesn't make too much sense either. Our entire set up process has felt incredibly rushed. One reason for that may be that we only have one year here, but I have to think there is an added pressure from the knowledge that there is only a matter of time before the Chinese team arrives. In a perfect world we would have discovered life on Europa by the time they land. I find that to be incredibly unlikely. Don't get me wrong I am more hopeful than ever that there is life on this moon, but I also acknowledge finding it will not be easy.

Lee has sent the second rover to the second location of interest. The first rover has arrived at the first location and so far, everything looks as it is expected to. Samples are expected to be sent in for me to analyze within the next few days.

I've been sending my son some images of the rovers. He is super into robotics, so he has been eating them up. They've also sparked a lot of questions in his messages. It was honestly pretty strange having a conversation with him about advanced technology like what we were working with. The last time I'd seen him I had to simplify everything about my mission because he was simply too little to understand. Now I was speaking to an intellectual young man.

One of the questions that caught my attention was "If they have all those advanced rovers and drones why they need you people up there at all?"

It was a pretty great question, and it was something I considered myself when I first accepted the mission. As incredible as the experience of being on Europa has been, this is a mission, and I would not be on it if having humans present did not provide an advantage.

The first major advantage of having humans on Europa is the ability to make rapid decisions. It takes an entire hour to communicate to Earth, and those communications are not possible during the hours Europa is being blocked by Jupiter. This makes decision making for a robotic mission incredibly difficult. The mission to discover life on Europa was very dynamic. There was a lot of strategy involved and that strategy could change fast based on events.

The second reason is there are limits when it comes to an all-robotic mission. One of those limits is what can actually be done with pictures taken from drones and samples analyzed by rovers. With me here using a microscope I can evaluate a specimen much more accurately than a rover could. I can also during the hours the rovers are powered down because Europa does not get the ideal solar energy for solar cells.

During the time we were here on Europa we would run the mission to discover life on Europa. If our time to leave came and we had not discovered anything the drones and rovers would continue searching, gradually making their way to other potential search sites.

God, would it suck to find nothing on this moon only for one of the rovers to discover life on Europa the next day.