Marc De Ver­teuil

AD 2029. Twelve months of trav­el through the vast noth­ing­ness of space and years of re­search and de­vel­op­ment to make a craft suit­able for this feat. It all comes down to the next few mo­ments.

The bul­let shaped hard-lan­der is eject­ed from the space probe. It's 200 km to the sur­face. Straight down. Red flames, blue flames blaze around the heat­shield-hot, hot­ter. Shock­waves smash the at­mos­phere. The at­mos­phere of Eu­ropa–one of Jupiter's 63 moons–is thin, but com­pared to the vac­u­um of space it's like mo­lasses. It en­ters an icy world. Small rock­ets eject the heat­shield.

Slow, slow­er, but still faster than the speed of sound, the hard-lan­der smash­es in­to the plan­et's sur­face of ice. With a de­cel­er­a­tion force of 25,000g it pen­e­trates three me­tres deep.It's cold,–200C, but the ra­di­a­tion is hot: 5.4Sv (Siev­ert) per day. One Siev­ert car­ries with it a 5.5 per cent chance of de­vel­op­ing can­cer. A few hours here will re­sult in ra­di­a­tion sick­ness, much longer–death.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers