NASA suspects icy satellite Europa has a deep sea, deep sea — Descent approximately 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers).
New evidence from the space agency’s Juno spacecraft suggests that surface processes on Europa generate abundant oxygen, some of which is transported into the world’s vast oceans. It doesn’t have as much oxygen as some previous studies have suggested, but it’s nothing to underestimate:
“The ice-covered moons of Jupiter produce 1,000 tons of oxygen every 24 hours, enough to keep a million people breathing for a day,” NASA said in a statement.
NASA discovers a super-Earth. This is a fascinating place.
Europa is a sphere slightly smaller than the Moon that orbits the gas giant Jupiter about 480 million miles from Earth. Crucially, the region inhabited by Europa is filled with intense radiation produced by Jupiter’s magnetic field. As a result, charged particles (called “ions”) hit Europa’s surface. In the process, these particles split water molecules on the moon’s surface, producing hydrogen and oxygen.
“Europa is like an ice puck, slowly losing water in a flowing stream,” Princeton University scientist Jamey Szalay, who led the new study, published in the journal Science. natural astronomy, explained in the statement. “Only, in this case, the flow is a fluid of ionized particles swept by Jupiter’s extraordinary magnetic field.” Szalay is studying one of the Juno spacecraft’s instruments: the Jupiter Aurora Distribution Experiment (JADE).
Mix and match speed of light
In September 2022, as the Juno spacecraft swooped from just 220 miles away from Europa, the JADE instrument successfully observed oxygen and hydrogen produced when particles bombarded the moon. Measurements show that this activity produces 26 pounds (12 kilograms) of oxygen per second.
“Scientists believe that some of the oxygen produced in this way could find its way into the moon’s subsurface ocean as a possible source of metabolic energy,” NASA explains.
This image shows how charged particles from Jupiter create oxygen on the surface of Europa.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/PU
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Life thrives in Earth’s salty oceans. There is certainly no evidence of life on Europa, but it may harbor an environment for life (as we know it). In other words, this satellite may be a “habitable” world in space.
“It’s one of the few places that might have the conditions to live.”
“This is one of the few places that might have the potential to be habitable,” Juno mission principal investigator Scott Bolton told Mashable in 2022.
NASA is very interested in this icy satellite and will soon launch a dedicated probe there in October 2024. The basketball-court-long spacecraft, called Europa Clipper, is designed to make about 50 flybys of the distant world of Jupiter to assess whether it could harbor conditions suitable for life. It will arrive in 2030.
