To Jupiter!!

[Polaris]

Lol, I know they're not going to stick a camera down there.

I'm pointing out the difficulties of any waves penetrating the miles of thick, solid ice.

I think they will go with impaction...aka firing a huge weight at the surface and detecting the seismic disturbances created by the collision.

[Anomalocaris]

It won't conceptually be hard for an probe built with available technology to penetrate miles of ice. You effectively create a small lander with an oversized radio thermal battery. Shape the probe so the stable orientation is with thermal battery at the tip, pointed down. The waste heat of radioactive decay in the battery will melt it's way through the ice. The melt tunnel this creates will refreeze after the probe passes, so the probe needs to unspool a wire as it goes, so it can remain attached to a transmitter/receiver left on the surface as it melts it's way through the ice.

[Annik]

Would it make it through 20 miles? o.0 Impressive. Go science!

[Anomalocaris]

Easily. Take for example the radio thermal battery used on the voyager probe. Each is good for about 1KW of power output On average over, say 15 years. This means the probe can melt about 5 pounds of ice per second for 15 years, or 1.1 million tons of ice in 15 years. This means it can melt a hole 1 meter by 1 meter in size and 600 miles in depth in 15 years.

In real life it can't melt quite that much because the ice would have started way below freezing temperature, so the battery would need to warm up the ice to the melting point before supplying the heat of fusion. Also ice is not a perfect insulator so some of the heat will be lost warming ice not meant to be melted. But the battery only needs to achieve 3% of the theoretical efficiency I calculated to go through 20 miles of ice.


[correction, I made a mistake in calculating water's heat of fusion. It should be about 350 Kj / kg, not 350 J / kg, which invalidates the above calulation. But it is still possible to melt through 20 miles of ice because newer thermal batteries like the ones on cassini can much better than 1 KW for 15 years, in fact the can do 4 kw for 15 years. So the Cassini batteries can melt 1 meter by 1 meter hole through about 30 miles of ice in 15 years, and the probe could be made smaller in section than 1meter by 1 meter, and rtg can be specially made to generate lots of heat]

[Polaris]

It would be interesting to know what type of ice (aka crystalline structure) comprises the crust of Europa. That might affect the efficiency of the battery as well.

[NoahsFarce]

This is awesome. What I really want to happen in my lifetime is a Europa dig though. Ice fishing on Europa anyone?

[Polaris]

This is awesome. What I really want to happen in my lifetime is a Europa dig though. Ice fishing on Europa anyone?

I doubt with our current technology, we will be able to dig through the ice sheet of Europa. My hunch is maybe we will know what is on Titan.

[NoahsFarce]

This is awesome. What I really want to happen in my lifetime is a Europa dig though. Ice fishing on Europa anyone?

I doubt with our current technology, we will be able to dig through the ice sheet of Europa. My hunch is maybe we will know what is on Titan.

Well, we already have real shots of Titan's surface from ground-level.

[Polaris]

I doubt with our current technology, we will be able to dig through the ice sheet of Europa. My hunch is maybe we will know what is on Titan.

Well, we already have real shots of Titan's surface from ground-level.

I assume you are talking about the Huygens from Cassini. That is a good start, but it is not good enough.