NASA suspects that the ice-covered moon Europa harbors a Deep, deep sea – Some 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 km) down.
And new evidence, from the space agency’s Juno craft, points to surface processes that produced a bounty of oxygen on Europa, some of which is transported into the world’s oceans. It’s not as oxygen-rich as some research has previously suggested, but it’s nothing to sneeze at:
“The ice-covered Jovian moon produces 1,000 tons of oxygen every 24 hours — enough for a million humans to breathe for a day,” NASA said in a statement.
NASA discovered a super-Earth. It is in a tantalizing place.
Europa, an orbit slightly smaller than our Moon, orbits the gas giant Jupiter 480 million miles from Earth. Importantly, Europa resides in a region that is flooded with powerful radiation produced by Jupiter’s magnetic field. As a result, energetic particles (called “ions”) hit Europa’s surface. In doing so, these particles dissociate from water molecules on the moon’s surface, producing hydrogen and oxygen.
“Europa is like an ice ball that is slowly losing its water in a flowing stream,” said Princeton University scientist Jamie Sazely, who led the new research, published in the journal Science. Astronomy of nature, is explained in the statement. “In addition, in this case, the flow is a fluid of ionized particles that is spread around Jupiter by its unusual magnetic field.” Szalay works on one of the Juno spacecraft’s instruments, the Jovian Auroral Distribution Experiment, or JADE.
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When the Juno spacecraft swooped just 220 miles from Europa in September 2022, the JADE instrument successfully observed both oxygen and hydrogen produced by particles bombarding 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 serve as a possible source of metabolic energy in the lunar subsurface ocean,” NASA explained.
A graphic shows how charged particles from Jupiter can form oxygen on Europa’s surface.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SWRI / PU
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Life thrives in Earth’s salt oceans. Of course there is no evidence of life on Europa, but it could harbor an atmosphere that hosts life (as we know it). In other words, this moon could be a “habitable” world in space.
“It’s one of the few places where it’s possible to live.”
“It’s one of the few places where it’s potentially habitable,” Scott Bolton, principal investigator of the Juno mission, told Mashable in 2022.
NASA is so interested in this icy moon that it will soon start a dedicated probe there in October 2024. The spacecraft, called Europa Clipper, is the length of a basketball court and is designed to make about 50 flybys of the distant Jovian world. It can harbor suitable conditions for life. It will come in 2030.
