Europa Mon Amour

Chapter 6

We finally made it to Jupiter and settled into an orbit around the largest planet in the solar system near Europa, which is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon. This sixth largest Jovian moon orbits Jupiter at 670,900 kilometers in a little over three and a half days. A slight eccentricity in the Europa’s orbit is responsible for creating the necessary heat to keep an ocean of liquid water underneath its icy surface; however, the exact mechanism for this phenomenon is not very well understood.

Our problem is to determine the most logical place on the surface to attempt a descent into the alleged ocean. The ice crust varies in thickness from six to nineteen miles and at an average temperature of -171 C is hard as granite. The surface of Europa is basically smooth, but it has many lines, which the astronomers call lineae, and these cracks move relative to one another because of seismic activity. Some of these lineae are as much as 20 kilometers wide. Our task is to find where a section of one of these cracks is thinner and therefore penetrable.

Another possible entrance point could be a lenticulae, basically a rounded dome or pit, some of which show evidence of recently frozen water. However, these could be covering over lakes that are caught inside the frozen ice layer but are not connected to the ocean.

The ocean under the ice layer of Europa is believed to be a salt ocean. A reddish and yellow stained surface is an indication of this; although this could also be sulfur deposits dragged from Io. Some studies have found that Europa has a thin oxygen atmosphere and that the surface may be covered with hydrogen peroxide.

We didn’t care about what’s on the surface. We want to know if there is life in the ocean underneath the surface, and the only way to find out is to go down into the it.

To make the landing location determination, we studied magnified images of Europa from a launched probe, the images from which were relayed back to the main screen at the command station.

“I think that best way to determine if there are thin newly frozen sections in the lineae is to measure temperature differences in infrared,” Marie said before pressing a couple of buttons. The screen image suddenly changed to various shades of yellow, green and red, indicating different temperatures.

To me the images looked like abstract paintings.

“This section of the moon appears to have the most newly frozen ice,” she said, pointing at a particularly cracked section near the moon’s south polar region. “There is venting taking place along this lineae, which is a good sign that this crack is recent.”

“Are you suggesting that this is where we should land?” I asked.

“Yes, but we’ll have to be careful because this area is probably undergoing seismic activity.”

“I suppose we don’t have many options,” I said. “We have to enter where it’s thin enough for the submersible to penetrate.”

“Is the shuttle lander ready?” she asked.

“Yes.” I stood up. “Let’s do this.”

We stood up and went to the lockers that contained our various spacesuits. After an hour of grunting and struggling, we had our bodies stuffed into radiation-hardened suits. I had instructed COMA to decrease the crew compartment’s G-force in order for us to be able to climb up the ladder to the hatch that led to the forward section. The radiation hardened suits are heavy but necessary because Europa’s surface is bathed in hundreds of REMS per day, a lethal dose for humans.

After struggling up the ladder and entering the hatch to a tunnel inside the axis of the crew compartment, we pulled ourselves along to the hatch that entered the forward hanger. The shuttle lander took up most of the room in the hanger bay. We entered the shuttle though a hatch and floated into the command chairs at the front. I pressed buttons to bring the shuttle to life. Panels on a console lit up and a pump began evacuating air from the hanger.

I looked at Marie and smiled before pressing a button to make the hanger door swing up. The view through the shuttle’s forward window revealed a magnificent view of Europa in all its glory hanging over massive Jupiter. Europa looked like a cracked frozen snowball. Dark cracks crisscrossed the surface and yellow and orange stains spattered the surface in between the cracks.

I activated the release mechanism and the shuttle was shoved out of the hanger by means of small thrusters. The main engine came to life and it slowed the shuttle down so that it began a slow fall into Europa.

I had to make many manual corrections using thrusters in order to get the shuttle on a trajectory to the landing location that Marie had chosen. After several moments of falling, I fired the landing thrusters to slow our decent. The surface of Europa began to fill our entire field of view as we slowly fell toward it.

“Move ten to the right,” Marie said while studying a radar display.

I tapped the stick to move the indicator to ten degrees.

“Six to the right.”

I completed that request.

“Slow to two meters per second.”

I pulled back on the stick.

“Two to the right.”

I twitched the stick to the right.

“Slow to a half meter per second.’

I twitched the stick back.”

“That should do it,” she said, looking back at me.

I pulled back slightly on the stick to set the shuttle down as gently as possible.

We bounced once but the shuttle remained upright. I shut down all major shuttle systems to conserve power. We need the shuttle to be fully operational to get back up to the main ship.

“Now comes the fun part,” I said. “We have to enter the submersible and then try to cut our way down into the ocean.”

“It’s not going to happen until we try it,” Marie said.

I was glad that she had a positive attitude about this suicide mission. I didn’t like any of it. If we get trapped under the ice we’ll die a slow death. I wasn’t looking forward to that.

We climbed down a hatch in the shuttle’s floor and entered a hatch into the submersible. This task was awkward but Europa’s gravity is quite low, only 0.134 G’s, so it wasn’t that much of a physical struggle. The main problem is the narrow hatch and the cramped quarters inside the submersible.

The submersible was designed to survive under intense pressure. It had been tested in the Challenger Deep part of the Mariana Trench, which is almost seven miles down and is at over a thousand times the pressure at Earth’s surface. Our submersible is theoretically capable of going down over twenty miles. However, Europa’s ocean could be as much as sixty miles deep.

There’s no guarantee we would find life. If the ocean is really salty, only crude halophiles could survive there. The other problem is if the ocean is too cold. The only hope is that there are hydrothermal vents to provide heat because there cannot be any photosynthesis in the absolute darkness of Europa’s ocean. Life also needs a source of energy, either from oxygen or hydrogen sulfide.

After I activated the submersible bay door to open and powered up the worm drive that extended into an auger mounted on the front of the sub. This provided us with forward motion and the ability to dig into the ice layer. The sub slid out of the shuttle bay and began a slow torturous trip to the edge of a lineae. When we reached the edge, the sub tilted down and rammed into recently frozen ice. The auger began the cutting operation. The effect was felt in the sub as annoying vibrations.

The trip down through the icy layer was jarring and very slow. We faced the possibility that we could open up a vent that would blow us out of the lineae. After an hour of cutting through a kilometer of ice, we fell down into an ocean that was totally dark.

Both of us felt the abject terror of absolute darkness.

I wasn’t taking a chance. I shot a marker beacon up into the bottom of the ice layer near the lineae that we had just dug through. This beacon emits a radio signal that we could use to find our way back out of here.

I hope.