Wall-e?

I'm sure all of you out there in Cyberspace have either seen or heard of the movie Wall-e, or even for those of us that are products of the 90's, Zenon.  The idea of both these movies is an inhabitable earth.  In which case, we must evacuate and live in space.  So as part of our human curiosity to seek planets with life like ours, we have been searching for planets that could support life.  But I also believe this search is for something that looks like a 'back-up plan.'  If, in the case that we do ruin this very hospitable planet of our's, where will we live?  NASA has sent several rovers and probes up to Mars already.  There is a stationary lander as well as two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.  There was a big buzz several years ago that there was life on Mars!  A photo was leaked from NASA showing part of a white object that looked very similar to a rabbit.  Turns out all this hulla-balloo was simply part of the landing bubble that incased the rover blowing in the wind.  But in any event, over the years Mars has seemed like the most promising of all the planets to support human life (eventually).  Scientists have debated that one of Jupiter's moons, Europa, could in fact also support life!  The idea is that Europa is actually a large ocean covered in an icy shell.  But, it has never been verified of what lies beneath the icy shell, until now!

On November 16th, NASA held a press conference detailing their latest findings about the moon Europa.  Scientists have no provided evidence of a body of liquid water on Europa, approximately equal in size to North America's Great Lakes.  The photo of this can be see here.  Based on their findings, this suggests that Europa could support life in a habitat similar to our's here on Earth.  Many of what we know about Jupiter and its moons, came from the spacecraft Galileo that NASA scientists sent to Jupiter in 1989 via the space shuttle Atlantis.  The photos taken by Galileo initially helped scientists conclude that Europa's icy shell concealed a global salt water ocean below.  (This ocean contains more water than all of Earth's oceans combined.)  The only problem is the icy shell is estimated at tens of miles thick, according to NASA scientists.   formerly, scientist's best inferences were that Europa's thick shell contained one large ocean, which would be bad for inhabiting.  However, these recent discoveries have shown that it may more likely be composed of large shallow lakes, that make inhabiting Europa a much greater possibility.
So, bottom line, if Mars turns out to be unsupportive of life, our next option is one of Jupiter's moons, Europa.