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Europa Missions

Title text: Before resurfacing, they promise to inspect the ice for any evidence of hockey-playing life.

Explanation

In recent years, multiple space agencies have sent spacecraft to observe Jupiter’s moon Europa. According to NASA, the moon could be a candidate for life due to the presence of a subsurface ocean and (possibly) hydrothermal vents, so it would make sense that the scientists would send spacecraft to observe it. The first two craft, the Europa Clipper and Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice), respectively, will investigate the ocean, topography and chemistry of the moon, to help in searching for signs of life. Europa's ocean is frozen on the top, the whole surface being solid ice with no exposed liquid, except perhaps at the bottom of any transient deep crevasses, which is why it described as a "subsurface ocean".

A Zamboni is a vehicle that, rather than being a scientific mission or a transport for other scientific missions, is meant to quickly resurface ice rinks that have been worn down. This is where the comic diverges from reality, describing a nonexistent spacecraft known as the Zamboni Voyager, operated by the National Hockey League (NHL). The spacecraft would be carrying a Zamboni because the NHL is trying to 'expand the league'. Normally, expanding a sports league would involve, at the very least, forming a new team in a city which did not have one. In this scenario 'expanding the league' appears to be in a more literal sense, resurfacing Europa to make it viable for hockey-playing. (Although Europa is the smoothest known body in the solar system, it's probably not smooth enough for playing hockey. Yet.) Hockey in reduced gravity — Europa's gravity is less than 1/7 that of Earth — would be an interesting idea.

The title text talks about finding hockey-playing life on Europa, which would be unlikely, as the life on Europa would exist underwater, where it's difficult to play hockey.^{[citation needed]} In addition, any conceivable culture(s) there would almost certainly be extremely different from Earth's, so even if the lifeforms on Europa do have kinds of entertainment similar to sports, it's unlikely that the sports played have even remotely similar rules or equipment. If, though, there were intelligent non-hockey-playing life on Europa, the NHL may consider them fair game as a virgin market for their product.

On top of that, making a spacecraft to send a Zamboni to Europa would be very difficult, as 14000 m/s of delta v (change in velocity) is needed. With a typical Zamboni weighing 5 tons, a very heavy rocket would be needed. Europa Clipper will not preform an orbital insertion and only a flyby to save fuel, not even a landing. Successfully achieving a propulsive landing would be very difficult, as demonstrated by IM-1 and IM-2, which both failed to land on our own Moon. Also, the water in a Zamboni would freeze, a normal zamboni is probably not hardened against Jupiter’s intense radiation environment and, unless adapted for robotic remote control, the life support system for the operator would also greatly increase the total weight of the mission.

Transcript

[Cueball's upper body is shown; he is in front of an image of a spacecraft.]

Cueball: There are now three spacecraft headed to Europa:

Cueball: NASA's Europa Clipper, which investigate Europa's subsurface ocean,

[In a longer shot, Cueball, Ponytail, and Hairy are all shown standing in front of another spacecraft image, with Cueball gesturing at it.]

Cueball: ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, which will study the topography and chemistry of Europa and the other moons,

[Another closeup on Cueball, who is in front of an image of a Zamboni with a firing rocket nozzle on its bottom.]

Cueball: And the NHL's Zamboni Voyager, which plans to resurface Europa.

Voice out of frame: Oh no.

Cueball: We tried to stop them, but the league is set on an expansion.

Trivia

The original version of the comic incorrectly referred to the "Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter" rather than "Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer."

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Make changes, try things out, or just have fun with the wiki here! Just leave everything above the line alone, please.

This is a test. PoolloverNathan^{[stalk the blue seas]} 20:48, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

A foreign student asked me to help fight against his math teacher. That was unusual. He was in that class for just a couple of weeks. The teacher's phone number was sent to me. The student asked me to spam-call the teacher. 172.71.155.55 22:58, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

here i'm just messing around in html, ignore this

^furhhfghure _{guyrburgryhuyvfr} "rvhru"

interesting way of writing quotations xd

hmmm this one of putting "<p>" in a line break will come in handy for when i want it to start at the same place than the first line

Please beware that <p> on mediawiki also disables automatic paragraph breaks, so you need a closing </p> or you'll break automatic paragraph formatting for the rest of the page. Zmatt (talk) 22:06, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

edit: da hek did that "</div>" come from An user who has no account yet (talk) 14:14, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

hi uh its hard to get here. is this a reference to undocumented feature??? hmm... this is interesting.
108.162.241.216 02:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

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yum yum ^{[citation needed]}

Hiuiedeixgeyceiyedhcdiedcve {{trout}}

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<a href=" [AT THE JULY 28TH MEETING][tab] "Cancel the meeting! Our cover is blown."> More testing: hello doesthiswork (yesitdoes) This isn't a good name (talk) 22:44, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

‮hi 164.58.172.158 14:21, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

What is this?????????????????????? King Pando (talk) 04:25, 10 March 2026 (UTC)‭

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