Depends how easy it is to find. Europa sends jets of water vapor into space. If we were really lucky, maybe that has life in it, and can detect it that way.
NASA has funded design studies for its Europa Clipper to collect samples from the plumes of water.
Nasa eyes Europa: Could the oceans of Jupiter's moon be hiding extraterrestrial life?
This would be an especially safe and unintrusive way to search for life on Europa.
It's not guaranteed to work - for instance, the water plumes might come from surface layers rather than the deep ocean.
Otherwise need to send landers to Europa. But they have to be carefully sterilized to make sure we don't introduce any Earth life to the planet.
We do have the sterilizing ionizing radiation of Jupiter which helps, and is counted as a factor when assessing missions to Europa for planetary protection.
One of the problems of a spacecraft to Europa is, you have to figure out if it is safe for planetary protection if something goes wrong with its navigation and it crashes on Europa. A crashed spacecraft could bury itself deep in the ice for instance, and missions to Jupiter take especial care to make sure they can't crash on Europa at the end of their life.
And then you have the challenge of burrowing through several kilometers of crust - that is unless there are remains of life on the surface (say the brown lines??)
So - is quite a challenge - though if the plumes contain life that could be a useful shortcut to detect it.
As for denying it, that's likely to be hard to do. Used to think that if you had life anywhere on a planet, it had to be almost everywhere like Earth. But that might not be the case e.g. in case of Mars - and Earth also in past went through a snowball phase when it had hardly any life. So - is Europa like that, with hardly any life, or does it have life everywhere, if it has life at all that is? Would probably need a fair amount of study to rule out life, in both cases, Mars and Europa, if we don't find it early on.
NASA has funded design studies for its Europa Clipper to collect samples from the plumes of water.
Nasa eyes Europa: Could the oceans of Jupiter's moon be hiding extraterrestrial life?
The possible payload of science instruments under consideration includes radar to penetrate the frozen crust and determine the thickness of the ice shell, an infrared spectrometer to investigate the composition of Europa's surface materials, a topographic camera for high-resolution imaging of surface features, and an ion and neutral mass spectrometer to analyze the moon's trace atmosphere during flybys.
The nominal Europa Clipper mission would perform 45 flybys of Europa at altitudes varying from 2700 km to 25 km.
Europa Clipper - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
This would be an especially safe and unintrusive way to search for life on Europa.
It's not guaranteed to work - for instance, the water plumes might come from surface layers rather than the deep ocean.
Otherwise need to send landers to Europa. But they have to be carefully sterilized to make sure we don't introduce any Earth life to the planet.
We do have the sterilizing ionizing radiation of Jupiter which helps, and is counted as a factor when assessing missions to Europa for planetary protection.
One of the problems of a spacecraft to Europa is, you have to figure out if it is safe for planetary protection if something goes wrong with its navigation and it crashes on Europa. A crashed spacecraft could bury itself deep in the ice for instance, and missions to Jupiter take especial care to make sure they can't crash on Europa at the end of their life.
And then you have the challenge of burrowing through several kilometers of crust - that is unless there are remains of life on the surface (say the brown lines??)
So - is quite a challenge - though if the plumes contain life that could be a useful shortcut to detect it.
As for denying it, that's likely to be hard to do. Used to think that if you had life anywhere on a planet, it had to be almost everywhere like Earth. But that might not be the case e.g. in case of Mars - and Earth also in past went through a snowball phase when it had hardly any life. So - is Europa like that, with hardly any life, or does it have life everywhere, if it has life at all that is? Would probably need a fair amount of study to rule out life, in both cases, Mars and Europa, if we don't find it early on.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
4.8m answer views110.4k this month
Top Writer2017, 2016, and 2015
Published WriterHuffPost, Slate, and 4 moreHuffPost, Slate, Forbes, Newsweek, Business Insider, and Science 2.0