Europa Moon Expert Slated for Space Show

Dr. Richard Greenberg is a man with a mission - a mission that goes into the ocean of a remote world in orbit around planet Jupiter at the moon Europa. With a "LIVE" interview with Dr. Greenberg set for Monday, Feburary 15, 2010 on The Space Show with Dr. David Livingston, listeners will be more than enlightened.

"What lies beneath Europa's icy crust?" Richard Greenberg has been pondering this question for 30-odd years. His recent book, Unmasking Europa, describes his view that Europa's hidden ocean and the life forms it may support are not that far below the surface. A professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Greenberg was one of the first to formulate how tidal forces could shape the geology on Jovian moons.

Greenberg, a professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, walks readers through the Europa photo gallery like a curator in an art museum. He interprets the meaning of these wonderful images and recounts how he and his colleagues came to see Europa's strange features as evidence that the outer crust is a thin layer of ice riding over a deep ocean. This is not the mainstream opinion, however. Space Show listeners will be enabled to call, chat, or e-Mail questions to one of the foremost Europa experts.

NASA and ESA decided to “prioritize” a mission to Jupiter now set to be launched in 2020 (for a 2026 arrival in the Jovian system). NASA will work on a spacecraft called the Jupiter-Europa mission and ESA will work on the Jupiter-Ganymede mission. Both probes will be launched at the same time to carry out this unprecedented planetary mission. Dr. Greenberg will update Space Show listeners on the latest developments.