A team of researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has detected traces of water vapor above the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa. This is a major step forward as the tiny rock from space is one of the highest priority targets in the search for extraterrestrial life, according to the agency.
The research team has not yet been able to detect flowing water on the surface, but scientists have found steam water. This is what senior planetary scientist Lucas Paganini claims in a NASA statement. According to an article published on November 18, 2019 in the journal Nature Astronomy, the NASA team found that it releases enough water vapor to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just a few minutes. That doesn't sound like much, but it was just enough to detect from Earth.
Of 17 observations at the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii, in which a spectrograph was used to determine the chemical compositions of other planets' atmospheres by scanning the infrared light they emitted or absorbed, scientists discovered only a single piece of water vapor. “We suspect that the outgassing of water vapor occurs at a lower level there. So far we have only rarely assumed localized events with stronger activity.” This is what Paganini and his team wrote in the report. However, scientists have suspected for many years that there is water on the surface. Several observations also seem to support this suspicion.
NASA examines Jupiter's icy neighbor for signs of life
More than two decades ago, NASA's Galileo spacecraft found evidence of an electrically conductive fluid on the lunar surface. An analysis of the data in 2018 then revealed evidence of massive traces of liquid. Data collected by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope also supports the existence of these water trails. “We have carried out careful safety checks to remove possible contaminants during ground-based observations.” This is what Goddard scientist Avi Mandell said in the statement about the discovery of water vapor. “But at some point we need to get closer to the moon Europa to see what’s really going on there.”
A mission to do just that is already underway. NASA's upcoming Clipper mission will examine the icy planet's surface in more detail as early as 2023. The spacecraft will be equipped with an array of cameras, spectrometers and a radar. This will allow it to study the thickness of the European ice shell during 45 flybys. Researchers may also gain further insights into the water vapor above the lunar surface.
