Europa Report, out in theaters, follows a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa to see if there is any alien life existing in the solar system.

The official movie site says, "When unmanned probes suggest that a hidden ocean could exist underneath Europa's icy surface and may contain single-celled life, Europa Ventures, a privately funded space exploration company, sends six of the best astronauts from around the world to confirm the data and explore the revolutionary discoveries that may lie in the Europan ocean. After a near-catastrophic technical failure that leads to loss of communication with Earth and the tragic death of a crewmember, the surviving astronauts must overcome the psychological and physical toll of deep space travel, and survive a discovery on Europa more profound than they had ever imagined."

Though the movie is reported to be very realistic, there is still no way that humans could actually go to Europa at this time.

NBC News reported on Aug. 1 that a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Robert Pappalardo, has been working for many years on plans to go to Europa, but that it's not possible right now.

"We're not at the stage of sending astronauts to Europa. That's well off," Pappalardo said. "There are things that would be wonderful to do with a person, but of course, it's much less expensive to start out with robotic spacecraft. If we find there is evidence for life someday with a rover, then we can start talking about things that are more science-fictiony."

Pappalardo told NBC News that the reason why we haven't gone to Europa yet has a lot to do with money. The website reported that the most recent decadal survey estimated that it would cost $4.7 billion dollars to send people to Jupiter's moon. Though Europa is a high priority to explore because it could mean there is life other than earth in the solar system, NASA is still dealing with the expense of studying Mars and building next-generation telescopes.

Tags
Jupiter, Moon