>>8713161Two-part mission with an orbiter and a lander.
Both spacecraft need to be designed to be radiation hardened, we'll nominally aim for a 2 year total mission duration from arrival at Jupiter to spacecraft disposal.
The orbiter slows into a polar Europa orbit with a semimajor axis of 500km and an eccentricity of as close to zero as we can get it. It then uses a combination of lidar and radar to map the entire surface of Europa to a detail of a few meters per pixel and get basic composition data. This should only take a couple weeks at most. Meanwhile the spacecraft will also be analyzing any dust particles it encounters and watching for any water vapor plumes that may be erupting from the surface.
Once the initial mapping phase is complete and a suitable landing location is identified the lander will separate from the orbiter and begin its descent, first by dropping into an eccentric orbit taking it close to the surface over its landing site, waiting for the landing site to be in the correct position, then at periapsis performing a single-burn landing maneuver. After the lander has separated from the orbiter the orbiter will finalize its orbit and begin to collect very accurate gravitational readings in order to study Europa's deep interior, as well as continuing to operate its previously functioning science equipment and activating any other equipment at this time.
Once touched down the lander would deploy a robotic arm to collect surface samples, a sonar device to scan underneath the surface of the icy crust and possibly determine the depth of the ice layer as well as the purity (how many rocky inclusions may exist in Europa's upper ice layer is unknown), and various thermometers/spectral analyzers/seismic monitors/cameras and so forth.
Both the lander and the orbiter would be powered by RTGs, with the orbiter having a much bigger power supply as it would handle the Earth communications as well as using lidar and radar instruments.
