While the orbit and closer to the Earth are passed on to private companies, our global ambitions begin to go further - we dream of missions to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn such as Europe and Enceladus, under which frozen surface can be liquid oceans. It turns out, however, that it may not be possible to land there.
A group of scientists, including the Planetary Science Institute and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, recently conducted a study on the surface density of these extraterrestrial moons, and unfortunately these studies did not yield very good results.
They used aluminum oxide (actually the diglite trioxide), which is an ideal substitute for regolith, which can be found on the surface of these satellites. Simulations carried out on samples of this material indicated that particles covering Europe or Enceladusa are more or less microns in diameter and are very loosely compacted, so that the surface of these moons may resemble fresh, fluffy snow.
It may mean that they are simply too soft to land on them. On the other hand, one must remember that similar fears were before the first unmanned landing on the Moon half a century ago, and although in fact our natural satellite covers fine dust, it is very little, and underneath there is a hard rock.
Scientists hope that before they can get there, further, more detailed observations will solve this problem.