Europa

April 30, 2054

Oxygen. In some of my more in-depth analysis of the water samples below I have detected faint amounts of oxygen. This is incredible news for the prospect of life on Europa. Horvat hugged me when I first had him check that the oxygen was not coming from our own contamination. It is important after all that we do not contaminate the samples. How dumb would I feel if I discovered life here only to determine the next day that that life was actually just a sample of a cell that had rubbed off my own skin.

After confirming, there seemed to be some mixed results from the team. Commander Hunt seemed excited, but not really about the potential scientific application and more from the mission status standpoint. It was understandable from his side. Besides, it was not like we'd discovered life. Discovering trace amounts of oxygen here would mean for someone like me or Richard who'd spent their life studying this stuff then it would for most people.

Jessica Miller did not react at all. There was a time where she would have acted incredibly excited, even if it was just to make me feel good. That version of her was long gone. At this point she was a true shell of herself. I'd talked to Commander Hunt about it. He agreed it was concerning, but he pointed out that she at least was not bed ridden like the point in the rocket where I'd seen my lowest point. I don't know if that made things better. People handle negative emotions in different ways. Not every case of depression looks the same. Still, what is there to do? It is not like we can just call a therapist from Earth and set up an appointment. Europa is too far for a traditional phone therapy session. Besides, who is to say Miller would even agree to it.

When I told Lee about the Oxygen, he seemed like he couldn't care less. Lee has been more focused playing with one of the telescopes we have available to us. Another part of our mission is to take observations on some of the other moons of Jupiter when they become visible. I've taken a few looks whenever my schedule gets really light, but I don't believe anyone has been too diligent on that part of the mission. The main focus here is the discovering life portion. Besides, the drones have done a stellar job photographing the moons and they have the ability to time the positions for ideal photos. There is also a satellite that our mission dropped off before landing that has been doing a lot of that work.

Of course, Lee has not been using the telescope for what it was meant for. Instead, he had been analyzing an object in the sky that he believed to be the Chinese team. If that is so, then our group needs to really get our mission together.

As much as I wished our governments had worked together to create a mission rather than pushing each other it was too late for that. We were here and they were here. If there is life on Europa, our team would be discovering it. We'd lost too much not to.

Speaking of the government, NASA seemed quite excited about my experiment results showing hints of Oxygen in the water sample. I was glad to see someone share my enthusiasm.

Diego also seemed pretty interested when I mentioned it in my video home, although he was more fascinated with the rovers and all the tech we were using. I don't even know why I bother trying to talk to him. I should just let Lee do it instead.