NASA finds evidence of water geysers on Jupiter’s moon Europa

The American space agency NASA has found evidence of the existence of geysers that blow water in the form of plumes into space, based on data from Jupiter probe Galileo, based on more than twenty years old data.

One of the researchers told The Verge that Galileo’s data is the strongest evidence of water plumes on the moon Europa. There was already evidence for this in the form of pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the moon in 2012 and 2016, but the images were too vague to draw any definitive conclusions.

Galileo flew past Europe 11 times between 1995 and 2003 to take measurements. During one such flight past the moon, the spacecraft detected anomalous, lower values ​​in Europa’s magnetic field. A higher number of charged particles was also found. Researchers found this remarkable, as it was not visible on the other ten flights. These deviating values ​​were applied in a computer model, where one version of the model attributed the values ​​to water plumes. This was not the case with another version.

Europa is covered with a thick layer of ice and the water plumes are thought to come from a large saltwater ocean that lies below the ice cover. In addition to water, there is also carbon and an energy source on the moon, for example. The energy comes from the tidal action of Jupiter’s gravity, generating enough heat to keep water liquid.

These elements are seen by scientists as crucial to the possibility of life, making Europe a prime candidate for research. In theory, a spacecraft could fly through the plumes to see what exactly lies beneath the ice surface. The space agency also wants to do this at Europe in a few years’ time with the Europa Clipper space probe.

This has already been done by probe Cassini, which passed through a gas plume from Saturn’s moon Enceladus in October 2015. NASA concluded based on the data that there is hydrogen in the geyser fountains.

The discovery is published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy, under the title Evidence of a plume on Europa from Galileo magnetic and plasma wave signatures.