Investigation of decontamination procedures for application on melting probes according to present Planetary Protection rules

Abstract

Liquid water is believed to be an essential ingredient for the formation of life. Therefore, if life exists outside the Earth, the most likely places where we should look for extraterrestrial life are the places that contain water, preferably in its liquid form. There are several of such places that exist in our solar system, for instance Mars and three of Jupiter's Galilean satellites containing significant quantities of water ice. One of them, the moon Europa, is particularly interesting, due to the possibility that there are hints for the presence of a water ocean underneath the icy crust as suggested by the data obtained by the Galileo spacecraft. Little is known about Europa’s possibly existing ocean and it would be a great benefit for science to take a closer look at what is happening below Europa’s ice crust. Essential for that is to penetrate the ice crust with a probe. This 6 month master thesis was performed at the Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC) of German Aerospace Center Cologne (DLR), where a melting probe prototype has been constructed for test applications. Within this thesis, the necessity to perform detailed investigations of appropriate sterilization methods and resulting constraints for the design of a melting probe for the exploration of ice habitats is discussed. These constraints result from the current Planetary Protection guidelines suggested by the international Committee on Space Research (COSPAR).