The proposed Mars mission is _landing_ on the planet. The proposed Jupiter/Europa mission is merely flying by the moon several times. A more detailed explanation of the science that can be derived would be helpful.

I like the expression "likeliest to have life". In fact you could say it has a million times better chance to have life than Mars. But, a million times zero is still zero.

I wish the government would stop wasting my tax dollars on such fruitless searches. There is no chance life could have evolved on either of these places. The mathematical probability is exactly equivalent to zero.

dudette,

I often complain about the money wasted on Shuttle, $2billion a year whether it flew or not. But, actually , the money spent in pursuit of knowledge is small compared to the complete waste that is the government.

With a small paradigm shift the US Military can change focus from defending us from terrorists to defending us from space objects and all those trillions of dollars can be better spent on space activity and research instead of wasted on earthly military defences

This is an agenda driven article, so it glosses over many points.

- Kudos for asking for a second opinion, though. The main lead on Cassini, Carolyn Porco, is pushing for Enceladus as the most likeliest habitat, and the easiest (cheapest) to assess for life.

- Europe missions, specifically the proposed one, would not easily assess life due to the thick ice. Mars would probably get there first, as for example Gale exposes sediments from its surface habitable period.

- Granted, Europe would teach us more about typical ice moons than Enceladus. But Mars will teach us more about Earth's early history, since we ourselves lack crust from that time (due to plate tectonics).

- The next Mars rover was already paid for under the current program (and is reusing spare Curiosity parts). It is _not_ prioritizing Mars specifically.

- The surface oxidants of Europa is a mixed blessing. An energy source as it slowly convects with the ice in, but also a poison for early life.

@verkle: Generally, the observed certainty that places that hosts alkaline hydrothermal vents has to have life is 100 %. RNA replicator strands _have_ to crystallize from a "gas" of various strands due to specific molecule thermodynamics, same as all crystals have to form under conditions of precipitation. ["Thermodynamic Basis for the Emergence of Genomes during Prebiotic Evolution", Woo et al, PLOS Comp Biol 2012.]

If Europa and Enceladus have access to such vents is uncertain, which is precisely why people want to look there. The science community certainly don't see this as waste of investment, and they are the specialists.

But if US won't go because they are too poor or too cheapskate, the rest of the world will and they will reap all the benefits of a vital science. Your loss is the rest of the world's gain.

@aaron: Terrorists criminals are much more damaging existing threats. The main problem with US politics is that they create more terrorists than they kill.

It's really naive of NASA, or any other science institution, to believe that a few probes or rover on planets are going to find any signs of any alleged life that may have been there.

Consider all the archaeologists and paleontologists on Earth, yet 9 times out of 10 the discoveries are made by a construction crew digging a ditch or foundation. So you have hundreds of thousands of professionals, and even billions of humans searching either intentionally or accidentally for ancient life on Earth, and even then we only find "new" things once in a while, once every year or ten.

With those mathematics, it would take tens of billions of years for a robotic probe to find anything on Mars...longer than the life time of the solar system....and that's assuming anything ever existed there at all.

Maybe the entire record has been destroyed by win erosion, which would totally destroy all macro fossils and probably all microbes too given enough time...probably nothing to find either way...

The main problem with US politics is that they create more terrorists than they kill.

The main problem with US politics is that they create more burger flippers than engineers and scientists combined.

I wouldn't dismiss the idea of Europa having life at all. Life has been found in the most extreme places on Earth. With an ocean and internal heat it's quite likely.

dudette,

I often complain about the money wasted on Shuttle, $2billion a year whether it flew or not. But, actually , the money spent in pursuit of knowledge is small compared to the complete waste that is the government.

Typical moron right wing asshat. Do me a favor and look at a graph comparing our govt expenditures. See how Nasa's budget is invisible and the "Defense and Military" budget is taking up 99% of the rest of the graph. But you are right, lets get rid of govt and all things govt, like roads and street lights and those ugly subsidized power lines and schools and mental institutions. We will all be fine without any of that. Idiot.

Also...with a meteor hitting Russia this week, you would think the need to colonize space would seem a little more pertinent now.

There have been THEE near misses with BIG rocks within the last year, two of them were out of the blue, we knew about them AS THEY HAPPENED pretty much.

Stop acting like you know a god damn thing about anything, we're not as far from monkey's as you might like to think....well some of us...

Carolyn Porco, is pushing for Enceladus as the most likeliest habitat, and the easiest (cheapest) to assess for life.

I'd love to see her #s proving it would be cheaper to go to Saturn and get in the necessary orbit to do the studies needed to find life there there.

Testing the vapor that shoots from the vents is no easy task nor sufficient to find life.

Going to Saturn would be about as expensive as sending a robot to the surface of Europa. It IS THAT FAR, and THAT expensive to get there.

As far as being cheap or poor, exactly how many major missions have ESA done solo?

The only big economy in the EU doing well is Germany. The rest of the EU is doing far worse than us. The austerity policies ensure the economic downward spiral will continue.

I WISH the EU could step in, but CHEAP defines the EU not the USA.

Oh and when it comes to space exploration Russia is NOT Europe, nor is China.

Neither will share the spotlight or riches with cheap EU more than we have.

The proposed Mars mission is _landing_ on the planet. The proposed Jupiter/Europa mission is merely flying by the moon several times. A more detailed explanation of the science that can be derived would be helpful.

Far out. I thought they were going to land there, and start drilling/melting through the thick ice sheet. Another flyby mission certainly won't tell us if there's life there.

I agree with an earlier comment that Carolyn Porco is indeed asking us to pay attention to Enceladus as a possible life source. I think we should concentrate our efforts there. We have data already from flyby's of Enceladus' geysers which should peak our interest a bit more. I wonder Robert Pappalardo considers "relatively thin ice shield.." I may be wrong but in my past reading this "thin" ice shield was 60 miles thick. Again coming from a nation of "burger flippers" (earlier misguided comment--jealous?) I could be wrong.

- Europe missions, specifically the proposed one, would not easily assess life due to the thick ice. Mars would probably get there first, as for example Gale exposes sediments from its surface habitable period.

- Granted, Europe would teach us more about typical ice moons than Enceladus. But Mars will teach us more about Earth's early history, since we ourselves lack crust from that time (due to plate tectonics).

Europe?!

No need to search for life here!

I like the expression "likeliest to have life". In fact you could say it has a million times better chance to have life than Mars. But, a million times zero is still zero.

I wish the government would stop wasting my tax dollars on such fruitless searches. There is no chance life could have evolved on either of these places. The mathematical probability is exactly equivalent to zero.

Care to share your equation to how you came about this probability? You must be connected to the universe better than any past or present genius scientists to be THAT certain. A true gift to behold.. or did you already visit these places with a microscope and covered every inch of the surface?

Oh i forgot this....> [/end sarcasm].