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FALL 2012
will map Europa’s oceans and
deploy the upgraded version of
ENDURANCE, which will seek
and identify microbial life in
Europa’s ocean.
“
In NASA-speak, a ‘nominal’
success would be the discovery
of novel microbes (bacteria
or archaea) hanging around
ocean-bottom black-smoker
vents. (The biggest trick there
will be verifying you did not
accidentally bring them with you
as contaminants on the vehicle
from Earth.) A wilder scenario
would be the discovery of macro
life in the subsurface ocean.
Given the life we just observed
at the bottom of 1,000-foot holes
drilled into the Ross Ice Shelf, it
is completely possible there will
be macro life,” Stone said.
Mining the Moon
In 1989 Stone was a semifinalist
for the Astronaut Corps but
was not selected. “After that I
became deeply involved in the
efforts by National Institute of
Standards and Technology to put
an industrial lab into orbit using
the shuttle’s external tank as the
basis for the lab,” he explained.
“
It was during that project that
we posed the question: How
DIVE SLATE
//
In Sistema Cheve, 2003
COURTESY BILL STONE