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mzm316 t1_isylasp wrote

Reply to comment by sonoma95436 in The Europa Clipper mission may be as exciting as a manned mars mission and it’s only two years away by Wide-Escape-5618

It’s far far easier to sample Titan’s conditions than Europa’s with a robotic mission right now, and it’s very far from a waste of time. To sample the hydrocarbons on Europa would require some kind of drilling apparatus that doesn’t exist yet. Are you interested in all of the science that can be done on Titan? Because I work on the Dragonfly mission.

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push__ t1_it341ib wrote

We couldn't simply catch water from cryovolcanoes?

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mzm316 t1_it38slh wrote

There isn’t definitive proof of cryogeysers on Europa so a mission involving that would never be selected for funding. But the clipper mission will have enough remote sensing instruments that we don’t really have to fly right through a plume to get a good idea of the conditions that exist - however a “true” sample of the conditions would need to come from the ocean beneath the icy crust because the process of cryovolcanism could possibly taint the sample you’re getting

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