So it's been confirmed, so-to-speak?
The Saturn moon of Enceladus does have a large
body of liquid water beneath its surface, feeding
its geysers?
That body of subsurface water must be the
size of Lake Erie considering how old Enceladus is.
And its geysers betray the fact that
the liquid water is probably only a few
hundred meter below the icy surface.
You're looking for ET life, even simple bacteria?
Don't send a robotic mission to Europa!
(1) Europa's extreme radiation environment.
(2) It's thick layers of ice kilometers thick.
(3) the presence of highly acidic frozen
spew/debris spread out from its icy cracks
[how quickly you forgot Galileo's data]
indicate that any subsurface oceans
are porbably sterile.
(4) The powerful jovian gravity.
(5) Europa's escape-velocity is considerably higher than
that of Enceladus.
All five liabilities speak against sending a multibillion
dollar spaceprobe to orbit and land on Europa
looking for life; you're probably talking about
a 100 billion dollar mission.
A moonlanding probe sent to Enceladus
would probably cost less than 20 billion
and would be able to lower a tether
through the ice down to the subsurface
water on Enceladus "to take a look."
Why bother with Europa? Try Enceladus instead.
