Beyond Earth, Jupiter’s moon Europa is considered one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of present-day life, and a new NASA mission to explore this potential is moving forward from concept review to development.

NASA’s mission concept -- to conduct a detailed survey of Europa and investigate its habitability -- has successfully completed its first major review by the agency and now is entering the development phase known as formulation.

“Today we’re taking an exciting step from concept to mission, in our quest to find signs of life beyond Earth,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Observations of Europa have provided us with tantalizing clues over the last two decades, and the time has come to seek ans

wers to one of humanity’s most profound questions.”

NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter in the late 1990s produced strong evidence that Europa, about the size of Earth’s moon, has an ocean beneath its frozen crust. If proven to exist, this global ocean could hold more than twice as much water as Earth. With abundant salt water, a rocky sea floor, and the energy and chemistry provided by tidal heating, Europa may have the ingredients needed to support simple organisms.

The mission plan calls for a spacecraft to be launched to Jupiter in the 2020s, arriving in the distant planet’s orbit after a journey of several years. The spacecraft would orbit the giant planet about every two weeks, providing many opportunities for close flybys of Europa. The mission plan includes 45 flybys, during which the spacecraft would image the moon's icy surface at high resolution and investigate its composition and the structure of its interior and icy shell.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has been assigned the responsibility of managing the project. JPL has been studying the multiple-flyby mission concept, in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, since 2011.

Instruments selected for the Europa mission's scientific payload were announced by NASA on May 26. Institutions supplying instruments include APL; JPL; Arizona State University, Tempe; the University of Texas at Austin; Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio and the University of Colorado, Boulder.

“It’s a great day for science,” said Joan Salute, Europa program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We are thrilled to pass the first major milestone in the lifecycle of a mission that will ultimately inform us on the habitability of Europa.”

NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington conducts a wide variety of research and scientific exploration programs for Earth studies, space weather, the solar system and the universe.

NASA

Happy Birthday, Einstein: Relativity Faces New Frontier

A century ago this year, a young Swiss physicist who had already revolutionized physics developed a radical new understanding of gravity.

In 1915, Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity, which described gravity as a fundamental property of space-time. He came up with a set of equations that relate the curvature of space-time to the energy and momentum of the matter and radiation that are present in a particular region.

One hundred years later, Einstein's theory of gravitation has withstood all the tests that scientists could throw at it. But until recently, it wasn't possible to do experiments to probe the theory under extreme conditions to see whether it breaks down. [6 Weird Facts About Gravity]

Now, scientists have the technology to look for evidence that could reveal physics beyond general relativity.

Physicist Albert Einstein stands beside a blackboard with mathematical calculations written across it in 1921.

Martin Behaim

Martin Behaim

Portuguese geographer and navigator

Martin Behaim, Portuguese Martim Behaim, orMartinho De Boémia   (born October 6, 1459, Nürnberg [Germany]—died July 29, 1507, Lisbon [Portugal]), navigator and geographer whose Nürnberg Terrestrial Globe is the earliest globe extant.

Behaim first visited Portugal about 1480 as a merchant in the Flemish trade and, claiming to have been a pupil of the astronomer navigation to King John II. He may have introduced the astrolabe of brass to replace wooden models of this instrument, then used in navigation to ascertain the altitudes of the Sun, Moon, and stars in order to deduce time and latitude. He probably voyaged down the west coast of Africa (1485–86) with Diogo Cão.

Johann Müller (Regiomontanus) at Nürnberg, became an adviser on returning to Nürnberg (1490), Behaim began constructing his globe with the help of the painter Georg Glockendon and finished it in 1492. In view of the extent of Portuguese exploration, his depiction of the world was surprisingly inaccurate and out of date, especially in relation to the west coast of Africa. It is interesting, nevertheless, for the indication it provides of common geographic suppositions on the eve of the discovery of North America. His globe is in the collection of the German National Museum in Nürnberg.