page_title: Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa
section_title: Goal
hierarchical_section_title: Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa / Goal
caption_attribution_description: English: This enhanced-color view from NASA's Galileo spacecraft shows an intricate pattern of linear fractures on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Newer fractures crosscut older ones, and several wide, dark bands are visible where the surface has spread apart in the past. The scene also contains several regions of "chaos terrain," where the smooth surface has been disrupted into jumbled blocks of material. Scientists are interested in studying Europa's surface materials from orbit and from the surface in order to understand their composition. If the surface ice is geologically active and convecting, as researchers have inferred, it is likely carrying chemical products produced by bombardment from Jupiter's radiation into the ocean thought to lie below. Those ingredients, called oxidants, may then be available to react with other chemicals, called reductants, coming from the seafloor, making useful chemical energy available for biology. The high-resolution images for this view were obtained by the Galileo Solid-State Imaging (SSI) instrument on September 25, 1998. They were then combined with lower-resolution color data from an observation taken on March 29, 1998. The high-resolution images have a pixel scale of 735 feet (224 meters) per pixel, and the image is approximately 220 miles (350 kilometers) wide. The Galileo mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Additional information about Galileo and its discoveries is available on the Galileo mission home page at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo/. More information about Europa is available at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa. The original NASA image was rotated 90° counterclockwise and converted from TIFF to JPEG format by the uploader.
context_page_description: The Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa is an imaging near infrared spectrometer on board the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. MISE will examine Europa's surface composition and relate it to the habitability of its internal water ocean.
context_section_description: A primary goal of the MISE instrument is to determine if Europa is capable of supporting life by searching for amino acid signatures in the infrared spectra. MISE can distinguish between different types of amino acids, such as isoleucine, leucine, and their enantiomers.
  The MISE spectrometer is designed to enable the identification and mapping of organics, salts, acid hydrates, water ice phases, altered silicates, and radiolytic compounds at global (≤ 10 km), regional (≤ 300 m), and local scales (~ 25 m).  Distribution maps of astrobiologically relevant compounds and evaluating geological processes can be used to determine if Europa's ocean possesses the chemical energy necessary to support life.   MISE could provide fundamental information on where future Europa landers would have the highest probability of detecting organic biosignatures.
caption: Intricate pattern of linear fractures on Europa's surface, likely colored by tholins, which are a wide mix of complex organic compounds
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