Hi Bill.
I'm Olwethu.
I'm 16 years old from South Africa.
My question is what are the future plans of
the Europa trip and what instruments will
be utilized to drill beneath the earth's surface?
So, the big news here in the United States
is this mission to Europa, mission is what
we call a spacecraft and all the people that
work to support it.
The mission to Europa is now in phase B. In
the words it's after phase A so it's been
funded, there's money being spent selecting
instruments for a spacecraft to go out to
Europa, the moon of Jupiter with twice as
much sea water as the earth.
And looking for signs of life is a tricky
business because a spacecraft would be going
very, very fast in order to get out there
and get in orbit around Europa without just
smashing into it.
So when you said the earth's surface I bet
you meant the Europainen surface, the Europian
surface.
So along this line I'm reluctant to call them
our hero but there's a congressman in the
U.S. Senate, in the U.S. Congress named John
Culberson and he is a huge fan of sending
a mission to Europa.
He has a daughter who's 19 I believe and he
wants it so that she will know whether or
not there is life on Europa, just like you.
And so he has put in a congressional bill,
this is here in the United States, this is
the laws and regulations that provide money
to NASA the worlds largest space agency, he
has put money in there to make a lander for
Europa.
And in general the lander would be a thing
with insect looking legs and then some drill
that gets really hot and melts through the
ice.
And the other plan they talk about the time
they want to have a big long tether, a big
cable so this thing would melt through 20
km of ice, like 15 miles of ice and look around
in the Europainen ocean.
It would be an extraordinary thing.
Now this is a cool thing and we're very excited
about it at the Planetary Society, but the
drawback is humans being what they are and
Congress being what it is here in the U.S.,
when something that ambitious or that expensive
or that pricey is put in a bill what often
happens is the other side, the Senate, the
U.S. government has two houses, just like
lords and common and the other side will cancel
that money set aside, but we'll see.
Either way there is a mission going to Europa
and there is a proposal to make a very sophisticated
complicated lander to look for signs of life
below the surface.
The extraordinary, and I hope it happens while
you're alive.
I hope it does.
Stay tuned.
