This Friday, December 12, 2025, at 11 a.m., we welcome Elodie Lesage (JPL Science, NASA) for a seminar entitled: “ORCAA: simulation of an underground access mission to Europa, Jupiter’s moon, in Alaska.”
Abstract :
In summer 2025, a team of 12 researchers from 5 institutions spent a month on the Juneau Icefield in Alaska to simulate a subsurface access mission to Europa as part of the NASA-funded project “ORCAA”. The mission successfully demonstrated a new melt probe technology capable of melting through sediment-rich glacier ice while continuously sampling borehole water. In the future, this technology could be brought to the icy bodies of the outer Solar System such as Europa to access their hidden oceans and look for biosignatures there. In this seminar, I will present the accomplishments of the ORCAA project, including the new melt probe developed, the experiments that we conducted on the Juneau Icefield, the first results from sample analysis and geophysical measurements, and how this new knowledge can be used by future missions to Europa. I will also show what daily life and logistics look like when working in such remote and challenging environments – I have lots of pretty pictures!
