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Originally Posted by BigRedChief
Perhaps most interestingly, $175 million of the budget has been set aside for the Europa Multi-Flyby Mission, a spacecraft that will be sent to Europa in the early 2020s, and the budget dictates that NASA must include a lander for the surface of this icy moon of Jupiter. "This mission shall include an orbiter with a lander that will include competitively selected instruments and that funds shall be used to finalize the mission design concept," it reads, reported Ars Technica.
A lander has been touted for the upcoming Europa mission before, but NASA has not been keen to firmly commit to anything yet, as there are many unknowns about undertaking such a landing. It remains to be seen how they'll go forward with this request.
Nonetheless, the large amount of funding essentially allows NASA to meet most of the other goals it has set itself. Crucially, they were given the $1.243 billion of funding for the Commercial Crew program that they have been pushing so hard for. Administrator Charlie Bolden recently told IFLScience that he counted this – getting SpaceX and Boeing’s manned spacecraft up and running – as one of the key goals of his time in office.
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Hopefully the mission to send a lander to Europa goes through. We need to send long term stuff to Jupiter's moons. enough of the fly by stuff. There is so much to learn in Jupiter's system. I think there is a decent chance to find life on some of the moons.