Image credit: NASA/NSSDC.UPDATE 9/1: My article "Target Europa: Ambitious Plans Aim for Jupiter's Ocean Moon" is now up at ScientificAmerican.com as part of an in-depth report on "Robotic Exploration of the Solar System." Excerpt:
An elaborate choreography of multiple spacecraft will play out among Jupiter and its Galilean moons in the decade of the 2020s, if plans now taking shape at NASA and other space agencies get the go-ahead in the next several years. The lion's share of these coordinated and collaborative ventures will focus on orbiting—and possibly landing on—Europa, a scientifically intriguing world where evidence of a watery ocean beneath the moon's icy crust points to a possible abode for extraterrestrial life.
