{"id":154400,"date":"2024-10-15T15:35:44","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T15:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/15\/nasas-europa-mission-is-a-homecoming-for-one-planetary-astronomer\/"},"modified":"2024-10-15T15:35:44","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T15:35:44","slug":"nasas-europa-mission-is-a-homecoming-for-one-planetary-astronomer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/15\/nasas-europa-mission-is-a-homecoming-for-one-planetary-astronomer\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Europa mission is a homecoming for one planetary astronomer"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/100924-lg-buratti_scilife_inline.jpg?resize=680%2C354&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"NASA\u2019s Europa mission is a homecoming for one planetary astronomer\" title=\"NASA\u2019s Europa mission is a homecoming for one planetary astronomer\" \/><\/div> \r\n<br><div data-component=\"video-embed\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n<p>Planetary astronomer Bonnie Buratti remembers exactly where she was the first time she heard that Jupiter\u2019s icy moon Europa might host life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was the 1980s, and Buratti was a graduate student at Cornell University studying <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/0019103583900532\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">images of the planet\u2019s moons<\/a> taken during the Voyager 1 and 2 flybys in 1979. Even in those first low-resolution snapshots, Europa was intriguing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt looked like a cracked egg,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those cracks \u2014 in a snow-covered, icy shell \u2014 were probably filled with material that had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/001910358890156X\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">welled up from below<\/a>, Buratti and colleagues had shown. That meant there had to be something underneath the ice.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.email-conversion {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  color: white;\n  margin-top: 50px;\n  background-image: url(\"\/wp-content\/themes\/sciencenews\/client\/src\/images\/cta-module@2x.jpg\");\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"rich-text embedded-conversion-content is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n#dynamic-wrapper {\n  border: 1px solid #ffcccb;\n  background-image: url(\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/032624_sb_space-sugar_feat.jpg?w&#61;800&amp;ssl&#61;1\");\n  background-size: cover;\n  background-position: center center;\n  padding: 20px;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n#dynamic-conversion {\n  padding: 20px;\n  background:rgba(0,0,0, 0.5);\n  color: white;\n}\n\n#dynamic-conversion h2 {\n  color: white;\n}\n\np.has-text-align-center a {\n  color: white !important;\n  text-decoration: none;\n  font-weight: bold;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"dynamic-wrapper\" class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<div id=\"dynamic-conversion\" class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\"><strong>Tell us about your Science News experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Help us improve by taking our 15-question reader survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>Buratti recalls fellow grad student Steven Squyres giving a talk about the possibility that Europa\u2019s ice hid a salty liquid ocean. \u201cHe said, \u2018Well, there\u2019s an ocean underneath, and where there\u2019s water, there\u2019s life,\u2019\u201d she recalls. \u201cAnd people laughed at him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They\u2019re not laughing anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the past four decades, Buratti has seen the search for life in the solar system go from a joke to a flagship mission. She is now a deputy project scientist for NASA\u2019s Europa Clipper mission, which launched October 14 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/europa-clipper-find-aliens-jupiter-moon\">to find out if Europa is in fact a habitable world<\/a> <em>(SN: 10\/8\/24)<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m kind of coming home,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><span class=\"caption wp-caption-3144820\">Planetary astronomer Bonnie Buratti has been exploring the solar system for four decades. Next stop: Europa.<\/span><span class=\"credit wp-credit-3144820\">NASA<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Space science first captured Buratti\u2019s imagination in childhood, which coincided with the beginning of the space age. She was a child when the Soviet Untion launched Sputnik and a teenager when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI got a telescope when I was in third grade,\u201d she says. She remembers figuring out the constellations from her front lawn in Bethlehem, Pa. \u201cFrom an early age, I was always curious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Planetary science drew her in with the field\u2019s larger-than-life personalities. In graduate school, she worked with science celebrities including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/drake-equation-turns-50-interview-frank-drake\">Frank Drake<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/blog\/context\/top-10-science-popularizers-all-time\">Carl Sagan<\/a>, who were spearheading efforts to take the search for extraterrestrial life seriously (<em>SN: 11\/1\/09; SN: 11\/7\/14<\/em>). That gave her a sense that the universe could be teeming with life, but not the support she needed to get through her Ph.D. She ended up working with less famous but equally charismatic astronomer Joe Veverka. It was Veverka who gave her the Voyager images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Buratti joined NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., in 1985 and has been there ever since. But while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/galileo-jupiter-goodbye-tour\">the Galileo spacecraft<\/a>\u00a0was finding evidence of Europa\u2019s subsurface ocean in the 1990s, Buratti was busy exploring Saturn with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/collections\/cassini-mission-to-saturn\">Cassini mission<\/a> (<em>SN: 2\/18\/02<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Saturn\u2019s moons were full of surprises, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/saturn-moon-titan-hydrocarbon-lakes\">phantom hydrocarbon lakes on Titan<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/saturn-moons-geysers-draw-water-subsurface-sea\">watery plumes from Enceladus<\/a> and a mysterious ridge that makes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/mountains-saturn-moon-may-have-come-space\">Iapetus look like a walnut<\/a> (<em>SN: 4\/15\/19; SN: 8\/4\/14; SN: 4\/21\/14<\/em>). \u201cIt was just one thing after another,\u201d Buratti says.<\/p>\n\n\n<aside class=\"sn-conversion rich-text rich-text--with-sidebar\">\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-elements-27c40654034fbeecef6418d6adfe0794\" style=\"color:gray; margin-bottom:0px; font-size:.9rem;\">Sponsor Message<\/p>\n<!-- Tag ID: sciencenews-org_leaderboard_incontent -->\n\n<\/aside>\n\n\n<p>Those discoveries helped advance the notion that subsurface oceans in the solar system might not be so strange after all. Hints of oceans have since turned up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/pluto-subsurface-ocean-may-be-old-deep-nasa-new-horizons\">as far away from the sun as Pluto<\/a>, Buratti\u2019s favorite planet \u2014 and yes, she still calls it a planet (<em>SN: 3\/27\/20<\/em>)<em>. <\/em>There may be ocean worlds orbiting other stars, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So when Europa Clipper arrives at Jupiter in 2030, scientists are looking to this moon as an example of worlds that may be common in the universe. Clipper will orbit Jupiter and make at least 49 flybys of Europa, to limit the amount of time the spacecraft spends in Jupiter\u2019s punishing radiation belts. It will take measurements of the moon\u2019s surface composition, gravity and internal structure to assess how suitable the small world is for life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Buratti joined the Clipper mission in 2022, as one of the people in charge of making sure the team squeezes as much science out of the mission as they can. \u201cWe have always felt that our role is to enhance science, to get the very best science out of the mission,\u201d she says. She and the scientific community at large are confident that they\u2019ll find something good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re pretty certain there\u2019s a habitable environment,\u201d she says. Echoing that graduate school talk from decades ago, she adds: \u201cOn Earth, wherever you see water, you see life. So, I think it\u2019s a really good place to look.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/buratti-nasa-europa-mission\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Planetary astronomer Bonnie Buratti remembers exactly where she was the first time she heard that Jupiter\u2019s icy moon Europa might host life. It was the 1980s, and Buratti was a graduate student at Cornell University studying images of the planet\u2019s moons taken during the Voyager 1 and 2 flybys in 1979. Even in those first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/100924-lg-buratti_scilife_inline.jpg?resize=680%2C354&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[23804,9955,20442,9945,22,9950],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154402,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154400\/revisions\/154402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}