It would be a mechanical probe, and it would have to withstand the harshest of conditions. So researchers are testing a prototype that is an early mechanical relative of the device that may one day be designed for Europa. At the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory plan to sink an aluminum probe just 30 feet underwater today. It's a far cry from the depths any useful probe will have to endure, but it's a start. An aluminum deep-sea probe, the prototype of one designed to withstand crushing pressures and extreme temperatures, is lowered to depths 30 feet in Monterey Bay Aquarium's giant kelp forest.
Tube worms feed at the base of an underwater hydrothermal vent.
NOAA Researchers will use similar probes later this year to explore the possibility that life forms exist not just around the hydrothermal vents, but in them. The search for life on Europa Europa is the smallest of Jupiter's four Galilean moons. While some researchers are skeptical that there is any life under Europa's ice, others are more optimistic. Any life found could prove to be extremely primitive, many researchers say. The Europa Ice Clipper , shown here in a NASA illustration, would be a flyby mission designed to obtain samples of Europa's subsurface by dropping hollow copper spheres onto the icy surface of the moon.