There’s now strong evidence that Europa might be a worthwhile place to search for life.
The perilous Juno mission could help reveal how Jupiter formed, whether it has a rocky core and even whether it influenced life on Earth.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the persistent anticyclonic storm, 22° south of Jupiter’s equator, is shrinking, according to Nasa scientists.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has observed water vapour above the frigid south polar region of Jupiter’s moon Europa, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon’s surface.
If you could lick the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, you would actually be sampling a bit of the ocean beneath. A new paper by Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and Kevin Hand from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, details the strongest evidence yet that salty water from the vast liquid ocean beneath Europa’s frozen exterior actually makes its way to the surface.