Geysers spray water above the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons.
Life in Space If life exists on Europa, I wonder what it looks like. Maybe it’s big and squishy with extra eyes and lots of tentacles. T at’s what the “aliens” looked like in the books that fueled my imagination as a kid. More likely, though, we will find tiny
organisms. T ey could be like those mats of bacteria I saw during my sub dive. Or maybe we’ll discover new and unknown chemical reactions and conditions that make it possible for life to exist. T at would be exciting! Right now, we have more questions than
answers. We don’t know what the water is like on Europa. We don’t know if there’s life there. We’ll have to go there to find out. T at’s my dream. We can’t send humans
that far out in space yet, so I’m doing the next best thing. I’m using what I’ve learned exploring life in extreme environments here to create tools to help us explore Europa.
Mission to Jupiter T e plan is to launch these tools on a space probe. It will fly to Jupiter, explore its moons, and maybe even land on Europa. T ese tools will be our eyes in space.
If they work, they’ll tell us about Europa’s ocean and what’s in it. T ey’ll collect data and send it back to us to analyze. We’ll find out more about the liquid water and what’s in it. T en we may finally discover if there is life beyond Earth.
Wordwise
astrobiologist: a scientist who investigates the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe
chemical reaction: a process in which the bonds that hold atoms together break and reform, creating new substances
solar system: a star, such as our sun, and the planets and space objects that orbit it
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