Spectacular 'geysers' on a moon of Jupiter - The World

ASTRONOMY steam jets 200 km. high in Europe

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Europe and is the smallest of the four major moons of Jupiter. A mysterious and icy world that has an underground ocean that intrigues scientists and that have been detected as far seem to emerge huge jets of steam. So says a team led by Lorenz Roth after analyzing the images obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope in November and December 2012 and compare them with older captured in 1999.

As detailed in his research, published this week in the journal Science , if it is confirmed that this is geysers mean that water underground ocean of this satellite can easily come to the surface, the least sometimes. And it’s only been able to detect these jets of steam for a period of seven hours.

The finding, they add, could be decisive when planning future exploration missions to determine whether Europe has a tenuous atmosphere , is potentially habitable. “The discovery of water vapor expelled from the South Pole reinforce Europe’s position as the candidate most likely to be potentially habitable,” said Lorenz Roth, investiador the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio (Texas, USA), in A press release from the European Space Agency (ESA). She notes, do not know if these jets are connected to liquid water they believe there beneath the surface.

The study details the jets of water vapor measured no less 200 kilometers. Were observed only in the South Pole ice this celestial body for a short period, seven hours, coinciding with the time when it is orbiting farther from Jupiter. They believe jets vanish when the moon passes close to your planet.

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planet Jupiter and its satellite, Europa, wherein where geysers

Detected shownSOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Investigators believe

geysers Europe could be similar to the geysers observed the Cassini spacecraft in 2005 on Enceladus, a moon of the planet Saturn. As they contend scientists would emissions high pressure steam escaping very narrow crevices.

Another study presented this week during the autumn congress that the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco (California, USA) has revealed the presence of clay minerals on the moon Europa, whose origin could be the shock of this object with an asteroid or comet. In this case, the study was conducted with the data collected by the spacecraft Galileo , which was launched by NASA in 1989 and lasted until 2003. This spacecraft was immersed inside Jupiter’s atmosphere until it was destroyed, revealing valuable information about its chemical composition, its magnetic field and its major satellites, including Europe.

Detection of water in these small moons makes them one of the main objectives seeking potential habitable worlds in our solar system. The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to send in 2022 Icy Jupiter mission to explore Jupiter’s moons Explorer and three of its major moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. The unmanned probe would take eight years to reach Jupiter, where he remained for three years, studying and performing in-depth maps of the planet and three moons.