A Thermal Melt Probe for Descending Through the Ice Shell of Europa Sized from Melting and Heat-Loss Bounds

This paper presents the sizing of a surface system for Europa, designed around a single operating principle and computed from published material properties of its working environment. The headline results are: descent speed of 11.36 m/day; total thermal power of 4,500 W; nose power of 3,800 W. The total mass is 112.8 kg including a twenty percent margin over the component subtotal. Every figure was produced by the accompanying computation script from stated assumptions about density, strength, thermal properties and composition; no figure is asserted without its derivation. Weak points of the design are reported at the same prominence as its strengths, including the conditions under which the chosen principle stops being the right one. This study is a computation, not a measurement: the design is SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED, and no hardware has been built or tested.