We don't know what a nuclear-powered tunnelbot will find if we send it toEuropa. How can a probe be submerged in water? We don't know much about the nature of that ice, what layers it has and what pockets of water it has.
We don't know what it is, but it's as hard as granite.
There is a lot of evidence for habitability on ocean moons. Water was found in the atmosphere by the Hubble Space Telescope. According to NASA, the Jovian system has more water in its ocean than all of Earth's oceans. The water is not clean.
Even though the outer layer is frozen solid, tidal flexing can heat the water close to the core and keep it in a liquid state. We should look for liquid water in the solar system.
It is hard as granite. It could take a long time for a robot explorer to get to the ocean. A nuclear-powered cryobot is the leading candidate for tunnelling through the ice. A tether would be used to connect a cryobot to a landers. It could gather data once it got into the ocean. Another idea is to use a swarm of small bots to take in-situ measurements across a larger area.
The tunneller could see pockets of liquid water on its way, but the goal is the ocean. How can it be communicated with during its journey? As the robot traveled downward, how could they communicate?
It's simple to explore Mars. The data is sent back to Earth via NASA's deep space network. There are three facilities in the USA, Spain and Australia that make up the Dsn. Any data sent back to Earth can always reach a facility on the other side of the planet. NASA gives other nations access to its system.
The environment atEuropa is different. Jupiter has a lot of power and it is hard to get something to go toEuropa. The designers of the mission had to make sure that they were against Jupiter. In a couple of years, NASA will send a craft to explore the icy moon, but it won't go toEuropa. A reasonable solution would be to have the under-the-ice robot communicate with a lander that periodically uploads the data to a Jupiter-bound spaceship.
Communication between the sub- surface bot and the lander is still difficult. The moon's surface images show very little craters. It is being resurfaced by the activity of the earth's plates. The thick cover of ice is not quiescent. When the ice is under stress and shifting, how can a tunnelling cryobot communicate with a landers? If the tether is damaged or severed, the mission is done.
“Communication hardware faces challenging technical risks due to the expected tectonic activity within the ice shells, their challenging thermal regimes, chemistries, and tidal motions.”
Signals Through the Ice Team, 2022 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference
The signals through the ice team is here. They are using fibre-optic tethers like the ones used in polar exploration to see if they can adapt them to the conditions of the island. It is not as cold as Earth's polar regions. It could be between 100 and 260Kelvin.
The temperature isn't the only thing. The ice will likely move and experience shearing. The entire mission is at risk if a communications tether is not used. Technical risks are faced by communication hardware.
The team stated in a brief for the conference that there was tectonic activity within the ice shells.
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