Recently I saw a program on DC involving a probe that in the future, will be sent to Europa to drill through the ice and look for a possible underwater ocean and of course, possible life ie: bacteria and microbial life. My question is this. Isn’t there way too much radiation from Jupiter to support any primitive life forms? Also when might JPL and NASA send this probe?------------ Interesting!
A couple of hundred meters of water make for a pretty decent radiation shield. Unfortunately plans for the icy moon orbiter have been scrapped for now, I don’t believe there is any funding for the project slated for 07 due to the mission reorg that’s underway.
Most of the radiation in the vicinity of Jupiter is near the orbit of Io, closer to the planet than Europa. And anything will make a good radiation shield, if you have enough of it, and a few kilometers of water is plenty good as a radiation shield (in fact, a few meters would be plenty). Anything that can make it through that much water without being stopped would also pass right through a living organism without interacting, and would therefore be completely harmless.
Doesn’t Europa as well as the other Galilean satellites of Jupiter always present the same side to Jupiter? If so, then Europa itself should block any planetary radiation from reaching the far side.