Alien Ocean: NASA’s Mission to Europa

Jupiter - Jupiter - The 5th Rock from the Sun-Share 3

Jupiter's Galilean Moon, EUROPA
Facts- Wikipedia
"Europa is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 79 known moons of Jupiter. It is also the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System.
Radius: 969.84 mi
Distance to Earth: 390.4 million mi
Orbital period: 85 hours
Gravity: 1.315 m/s²

Size and Orbit
"With an equatorial diameter of 1,940 miles (3,100 kilometers), Europa is about 90 percent the size of Earth’s Moon. So if we replaced our Moon with Europa, it would appear roughly the same size in the sky as our Moon does, but brighter — much, much brighter. Europa’s surface is made of water ice and so it reflects 5.5 times the sunlight than our Moon does.

Europa orbits Jupiter at about 417,000 miles (671,000 kilometers) from the planet, which itself orbits the Sun at a distance of roughly 500 million miles (780 million kilometers), or 5.2 astronomical units (AU). One AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun. Light from the Sun takes about 45 minutes to reach Europa. Because of the distance, sunlight is about 25 times fainter at Jupiter and Europa than at Earth."

"Surface
Europa’s water-ice surface is crisscrossed by long, linear fractures. Based on the small number of observable craters, the surface of this moon appears to be no more than 40 to 90 million years old, which is youthful in geologic terms (the surface of Callisto, another of Jupiter’s moons, is estimated to be a few billion years old). Along Europa's many fractures, and in splotchy patterns across its surface, is a reddish-brown material whose composition is not known for certain, but likely contains salts and sulfur compounds that have been mixed with the water ice and modified by radiation. This surface composition may hold clues to the moon's potential as a habitable world."

"Atmosphere
Europa has only a tenuous atmosphere of oxygen, but in 2013, NASA announced that researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope found evidence that Europa might be actively venting water into space. This would mean the moon is geologically active in the present day. If confirmed by follow-up observations, the plumes of water could be studied by future spacecraft similar to how the Cassini sampled the plume of Saturn’s moon Enceladus."

"Magnetosphere
One of the most important measurements made by the Galileo mission showed how Jupiter's magnetic field was disrupted in the space around Europa. The measurement strongly implied that a special type of magnetic field is being created (induced) within Europa by a deep layer of some electrically conductive fluid beneath the surface. Based on Europa's icy composition, scientists think the most likely material to create this magnetic signature is a global ocean of salty water, and this magnetic field result is still the best evidence we have for the existence of an ocean on Europa."

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