Year: 2018-19
Indrayudh Chakraborty
School: Smt. Sulochanadevi Singhania School
Grade: 6
City: Thane
"Once I was reading about Galileo in a book. There I learned that he had discovered one of Jupiter’s moon- ‘EUROPA” using just simple telescope which he invented. It gave me an immense interest to know about all Galelion moons. After reading facts about all Galelion moons, I liked ‘Europa’ most, because I feel there is an immense possibility that life can flourish on ‘Europa”.
Facts about Europa :
I choose Europa because I believe it may show signs of life. First I thought of Titan, but then it has less possibility of life as it has pools of methane on its surface, which cannot sustain life. Europa can have the ingredients needed for life, like water, chemicals, energy. There are several proofs that support the idea that Europa contains salty liquid water miles down from its surface. It is believed that this salty liquid water lies beneath an ice shell that is several miles thick. The ocean has rocky sea floor which supplies various minerals to the ocean due to change in temperature.
Europa has several life-giving elements like carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and sulfur. These all have given immense possibilities to create life. There is possibility that Hydrogen, Oxygen and Carbon can mix with each other and can initiate first step of life formation. On the other hand heat energy produced in the rocky sea floor can trigger a chemical reaction between the gases produced and hence create life.
Major challenge to explore Europa is its icy crust. As Europa crust is full of ice, exploring and researching in Europa becoming a next to impossible thing. I have brainchild a machine which may help our explorer to do research in Europa. My machine’s name is ‘THERMOCRAFTIS”.
THERMOCRAFTIS has 3 huge blades. It looks like a fan. Center point of this machine is bent inside to absorb pressure. The function of the THERMOCRAFTIS is to cut the icy floor with the help of 3 blades of Europa to make a path through the icy crust. THERMOCRAFTIS can be run by a motor, but to power the motor on EUROPA we need to generate energy from the local source. As we know Europa is surrounded by a field of magnetic radiation because of Jupiter’s magnetosphere, so we can utilize this energy from magnetosphere for Thermocraftis, by converting the magnetic energy to electromagnetic power.
Today, our home planet- Earth is facing various environmental challenges. There are many solutions which are devised to face them. One of these can be colonization of human race outside Earth. So if Europa can have a life sustaining environment then it can be the choice of becoming the second home for us."
