Next stop, Europa! The White House has included an $18.5 billion budget allocation in 2016 for NASA, which includes $30 million to mount a mission to the smallest of Jupiter's four Galilean satellites.
Europa is believed to be the likeliest candidate in the solar system outside of Earth for supporting life.
"For the first time, the budget supports the formulation and development of a Europa Mission, allowing NASA to begin project formulation, Phase A," NASA officials wrote in a summary of the proposed budget which was reviewed by Space.com.
Though it's early days for mission planning, NASA would likely launch its Europa mission in the mid-2020s, chief financial officer David Radzanowski told reporters this week. Such an endeavor would possibly follow the guidelines of the "Europa Clipper" mission concept — a 3.5-year stay in Jupiter's vicinity involving nearly 50 flybys of the Jovian satellite.
"Once in orbit around Jupiter, the Clipper would make 45 flybys of the 1,900-mile-wide (3,100 kilometers) Europa over the course of 3.5 years, as the concept is currently envisioned," Space.com noted.
A Clipper-type probe wouldn't land on Europa but it would perform an orbital study of the moon's ocean, where scientists believe there's a chance life has developed. Those watery depths are encased in an ice shell, which would also be mapped for potential future landing missions, NASA scientists said.
"Sounding the ice shell would be key," David Senske of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. told Space.com late last year. "We have a preconceived notion of what a [Europa] lander looks like [but] what we find may not support our preconceived notion."
If the eventual Europa mission does follow the Europa Clipper pre-mission guidelines, it could launch in 2022 and carry a total cost of $2 billion, the site reported.
As Discovery.com noted, this week's budget request is on top of the $100 million Congress allocated for the Europa mission last year.