"Detecting Alien Life with a Single Ice Grain: NASA's Europa Mission"
A new experiment suggests that NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft may only need to capture a single grain of ice from Jupiter's moon Europa to detect evidence of alien life. The spacecraft, scheduled to launch in 2024, is equipped with the Surface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) to study particles of Europa's surface ice and dust, and a recent study simulated the potential detection of life using this instrument. The findings indicate that even a tiny fraction of cellular material could be identified by a mass spectrometer on board the spacecraft, providing more confidence in the potential to detect lifeforms similar to those on Earth in Europa's ocean.