Deep under Europa’s thick icy surface
lies an ocean larger
than all of Earth’s oceans combined.
But it’s pretty useless way out there.
Let’s ship that water back to Earth.
Even though it’s slightly smaller
than our own Moon,
scientists theorize that
beneath its frozen surface
could be nearly twice as much water
as on Earth.
Most of what we know about this moon
is from information gathered
by the Galileo spacecraft.
But Europa has been visited
by four other spacecrafts as well.
The journey to Europa is a long one.
It’s located five times
further away from the Sun than Earth.
With our current technology,
a space probe could reach this moon
within three years.
But if you want to send a ship
with a crew of astronauts to mine,
collect and transport water back home,
you're going to need a lot more time.
Europa's waters are intriguing, but nothing is as dire as the oceans back home.
Climate change has been raising temperatures around the globe,
and now ice glaciers are melting and raising sea levels.
And what's worse, carbon dioxide dissolves over oceans and creates a process called acidification.
This deadly chemical change destroys coral reefs and forces the fish that live there to migrate somewhere further north.
Our actions have consequences, and it's great to reduce your personal carbon footprint,
but now's the time to encourage lawmakers and manufacturers to stop using so much fossil fuel.
It doesn't matter if it's a server farm or an olive grove.
We all have to stop emitting so much deadly CO2 into the atmosphere.
Progress has to start at the top.
Let's work together to get lawmakers to create the infrastructure we need to lay out the path to the future.
And support businesses that reduce their carbon emissions.
Remember, your dollars have as much power as a NASA rocket.
You’ve been waiting decades
for this moment.
NASA is finally ready to send
a large spacecraft to Europa.
And you’d be on board.
Getting your big ship out
to Jupiter’s icy moon
would require you to get a little boost.
Using a gravity assist flyby technique,
you’d pick up some additional speed
by swinging past Venus or Mars
on the way.
With this technique,
you'd be borrowing a bit of momentum
from these planets' own orbits
around the Sun.
You'd slingshot your ship out of their orbit
at a faster speed than you entered it.
Or slower, in case you're on track
to zip past your destination.
When you arrive at your destination
the first thing you’d notice
when you stepped out of your ship
would be how cold it is.
Near Europa's poles,
temperatures could be
as low as - 223 °C (- 369 °F).
And it would be dark.
Here, you’d only be getting
4% of the sunlight
you’d be used to back on Earth.
But you’d be dazzled
by the pulsating green light
of the icy surface.
This glow-in-the-dark effect
would be thanks to Jupiter
constantly drenching Europa
in high-energy radiation.
And Jupiter would be almost
24 times larger in the sky
than our Moon is to us.
It would be time
to drill through the ice.
And this would be hard work.
In order to reach the water below,
you’d have to drill deeper
than the deepest hole ever drilled on Earth.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia
goes down 12.2 km (7.6 mi).
On Europa, you’d need to go twice as far.
And this could take you a while.
Scientists in Antarctica drilled there
at a rate of about 1 m (3.3 ft)
every six minutes.
It took them three days
to reach a depth of 730 m (2,400 ft).
Now, scientists estimate
that Europa's ocean
could have a depth
of between 60 and 150 km (40 to 100 mi).
That would make it almost 14 times
deeper than Earth's Challenger Deep,
the almost-bottomless pit
of the Mariana Trench.
After all this travel and work,
you’d finally be able to take a sip
of this ice-cold,
extraterrestrial water
for the very first time.
But you’d spit it out pretty fast.
It would taste a lot
like ocean water back on Earth.
Maybe you’d better check its composition
now before loading it up for the trip home.
Based on Europa's surface
and rocky interior,
this water would likely have a mix
of magnesium sulfate
and sodium chloride.
In other words, Epsom salt and table salt.
Yeah, this water would undoubtedly
make a more relaxing soak in the tub
after all that drilling.
In order to drink it,
you’d need to desalinate it first.
This process would freshen it up
enough to quench your thirst.
This expedition would be
too expensive an adventure
to return home empty-handed.
The uncrewed eight-year Galileo mission
to study Jupiter
cost about $1.39 billion.
So the price tag of your mission
would be, well,
astronomical.
Would it have been easier and cheaper
to just desalinate
our planet's ocean water?
Well, no time to worry about that now.
You’d load up your ship
with as much water as it can carry
and get ready for the long journey
back to Earth.
As you look out
on Europa's glowing surface
getting further and further away,
you’d remember that your spacecraft
is loaded with water
from another celestial body.
And you didn’t even think
to look for signs of biological life.
Time to turn the ship around
and look for aliens.
But that’s a story for another WHAT IF.