Written into the 2016 House appropriations bill, Rep. John Culberson has legally required NASA to attempt a mission to Europa, one of Jupiter’s many moons.
He did so after past attempts to fund a NASA Europa mission had failed.
The congressman has expressed his fascination with Europa over the years, and Europa may be the first space body found to possess conditions that could facilitate biological life, according to NASA. Even after NASA stopped requesting funding for a Europa mission, Culberson continued to push for a budget specifically tailored to the needs of a mission to Jupiter’s moon.
Europa has appeared in previous Earth-based images to be covered in a bright white shell of ice. These findings was later confirmed by spacecraft. Another spacecraft confirmed that the crust of Europa is regularly fracturing and resurfacing itself, causing scientists to believe that underneath the ice there could be up to 90 miles of ocean.
Minerals and salts are also suggested to be present on the moon.
Culberson has tried in previous years to allocate money to a Europa specified mission within NASA to allow them to launch a mission to further investigate the moon. However, TIME magazine reported that his past attempts failed due to a lack of specificity in appropriations bills.
In his first attempt to allocate money for a Europa mission Culberson provided NASA with an overall budget. This meant that instead of giving money to NASA for a Europa mission alone, the money could be used for other projects. When money became tight NASA appropriated money to more pressing issues and pushed Europa to the side.
In the appropriations bill of 2016 however, the congressman explicitly wrote that a portion of the money that was to go to NASA would be used for a Europa mission. He included in the bill that NASA would need to have launched their first mission to Europa by 2022, and their second, which would involve a lander, by 2024.
Both of these deadlines will be extremely hard for NASA to reach for two reasons, the first being that the rocket NASA intends to use to reach Europa has not yet been perfected.
The rocket NASA has planned on using is the Space Launch System (SLS). This rocket when fully operating will be able to travel farther and faster than its counterpart the Saturn V, according to NASA.
The problem with the SLS program when it comes to meeting the 2022 deadline, is that although the program was started in 2004, the next attempt at launching the rocket is not until 2018, which could be cutting it close if the rocket fails.
The second problem NASA could run into when it comes deadlines, is that it may not be able to successfully conduct a mission in which a lander reaches Europa.
NASA’s administrator Charles Bolden told Ars Technica, “My scientific community, the people who do mission planning, say we need to go and do a little more research with the first mission to Europa to determine whether that’s a place we want to send a lander.”
The atmospheric conditions along with the intense cold on the moon’s surface will greatly increase the difficulty of landing a vehicle on the ground.
NASA had expressed its concerns to the congressman, but they were overlooked in the congressman’s eagerness to launch a mission to Europa.
If NASA fails to meet the deadlines put forward by Congress there will not be any legal consequences, however it could jeopardize future funding for the space organization.
Ultimately, it will be up to NASA’s team of engineers and scientists to get the Europa space crafts prepared and ready to meet their deadlines.