MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia plans to participate in a European mission to investigate Jupiter's moon Europa and search for simple life forms, the Interfax news agency reported on Monday, quoting a senior researcher.

The head of the Space Research Institute, Lev Zelyony, said a project to explore the giant gaseous planet Jupiter would shortly be included in the programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) for the years 2015 to 2025.

"The main task is to explore its satellite Europa, on which under a thick layer of ice a liquid water ocean has been detected," said Zelyony.

Russia is to participate in the programme, called Laplace after French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace, and has suggested landing a craft in one of the fissures in Europa's icy crust.

Having landed, the craft would melt some of the ice and search for life forms, he said.

"Where there is an ocean, life could arise. In this respect, after Mars, the Europa satellite is probably the most intriguing place in the solar system," said Zelyony.

Russia has gradually been reviving its space research programme, which all but collapsed after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991.

Moscow has been cooperating closely with the ESA as part of this revival.

At the end of this year an upgraded Russian Soyuz rocket is due to be launched for the first time from the ESA's Kourou launchpad in French Guiana.

Last October Moscow also signed a deal with Washington to provide the US space agency NASA with instruments for scanning the Moon and Mars for water.

Wonder what Arthur C Clarke really knows about Europa i mean out of all the planets and moons in our solar system was it just coincidence a lifeform was found on Europa in Clarke's book 2010

I am sure he keeps well up on science, and choose accordingly.

I actually think that's a pretty good place to look.

I do too.
I wonder what kind of world Europa would become if it were dragged to a favorable orbit?

Favorable for whom? How do we know that it isn't ALREADY favorable to some kind of life? I've often said, just because WE can't live there doesn't mean that SOMETHING doesn't live there.

Put me deep in the ocean and I'll be dead within ten minutes: even less! Yes things live there.

There are bacteria that live in volcanic vents, and even bacteria that can live in high-radiation areas that would finish me almost immediately.

There are bacteria that live in oxygenless voids two miles beneath the surface of the eath.

Those are bacteria sure, but it shows that LIFE can survive in all kinds of places.

I would not be surprised in there is SOME kind of life on Mars and Venus. Each has an atmosphere, and though you and I wouldn't survive without help: maybe something, even something intelligent DOES live there.

Europa has liquids, and even methane, which should not be able to exist without some kind of life-form to generate it: but it's there. It's great to think about the life that COULD BE just around the corner.

I wish i could be around when they start doing manned missions to these places....

Not whom, but life as we would know it.
If one were able to place that moon so that it can have the surface temperatures we have here, how livable of a place would it be?

im willing to bet they will find some life, probably bacteria or some small organisms but i might very well be dead by 2015 so i may not know.

hopefully they find summat on this moon;)