This is a series of short information articles that I wrote over the past couple years on various subjects. I hope you enjoy them.

Just Pondering Series

by Lisa Long

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Violating the Prime Directive
Probing Europa

In 1997 I read an article by Jane Allen, about the possibility of our sending a ice penetrating robot to Jupiter's moon, Europa, and into the primal soup of it's suspected ocean.

I believe that this might be a violation of the prime directive, if we had one. How are we going to disinfect that probe to such a degree that we know we are not planting a planetary changing seed of microorganisms? Or even introducing a chemical combination that is foreign to that system, from the electrical components of the probe itself?

One micro from us could change the future evolutionary plan of that planet. Is that how we were seeded? From a careless, and curious group of visitors?

Look but don't touch, is my note of caution. That is not our moon. It belongs to Jupiter, and whatever its future lies, let's not go messing it up. Let's clean up our own world, before we go and mess up someone else's. Even if that or those some ones are not born yet.

News Update - They did good....

AP Tuesday, Sep 23, 2003, Page 7 (shortened)

Scientists bid a tearful farewell to the Galileo spacecraft on Sunday....

NASA's aging Galileo spacecraft plunged into Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere, bringing a deliberately fiery conclusion to a 14-year exploration of the solar system's largest planet and its moons. The unmanned spacecraft, traveling at nearly 173,770 kph, was torn apart and vaporized by the heat and friction of its fall through the clouds after it dove into the atmosphere at 19:57 GMT Sunday as planned.

....NASA initially considered leaving Galileo in orbit after it depleted its onboard store of fuel, which was used to trim its course on each of its 35 spins around Jupiter. Instead, it opted to crash the 1,350kg Galileo to eliminate the possibility it could smack into the watery moon Europa and contaminate it with any microbes aboard. Were Earth bugs to survive on Europa, they could compromise future attempts to probe the moon for indigenous life, scientists feared....