It’s not earth, Mars or moon but this orb in the solar system could possibly have a large ocean. It’s Jupiter’s moon Europa, and the latest evidence suggests that the moons subsurface liquid water reservoir may be venting plumes of water vapour above the icy shell. But Europa was always thought to have an ocean, but then why is it coming in the news now.
see also: In search of new planets; NASA’s new satellite launched
The data about Europa was collected by NASAs Galileo spacecraft in 1997. But it was recently put through new advanced computer models that helped it solve a mystery – a brief an localised bend in the magnetic field. Until recently there wasn’t a strong explanation for this. The new analysis used data collected much closer to the source and is a corroborating evidence for what NASAs Hubble telescope suggested in 2012.
The study was done by researchers led by Jus Xianzhe at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbourn and will be published on the Mondays issue of journal Nature Astronomy.
The news come at the right time as NASA is planning for a mission to Europa in 2022 named Clipper.
Robert Pappalardo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said “There now seem to be too many lines of evidence to dismiss plumes at Europa. This result makes the plumes seem to be much more real and, for me, is a tipping point. These are no longer uncertain blips on a faraway image.If plumes exist, and we can directly sample what’s coming from the interior of Europa, then we can more easily get at whether Europa has the ingredients for life.”
Could we find life in Europa ?
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