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One of the world’s largest telescopes located in Hawaii, an international research team at the NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center observed water vapor and water molecules directly from the surface of Jupiter’s second satellite Europa.
It is known that the surface of Europa is formed of cracked ice in several places and is covered with an atmosphere mainly composed of oxygen. This confirmation of water vapor is evidence that a layer of liquid water, sometimes erupting like a geyser, exists beneath the surface of the ice. The team believes that the inside of Europa is filled with a liquid ocean. Of course, it is possible to think of the possibility that there existed a pool of melted ice just below the surface of the geyser.
The research team revealed that although it has not yet directly detected liquid water, it has found the best equivalent to this, water vapor. According to a report published by the research team in the journal Nature Astronomy, they found water vapor equivalent to 2.46 t/sec, the amount that would fill an Olympic-standard swimming pool in minutes.
The research team conducted 17 observations between 2016 and 2017 to measure the planet’s atmospheric chemistry using a telescope. Through this, a clear indication of water vapor was detected once. They identified specific frequencies of infrared radiation that water molecules emit when they interact with solar radiation.
Until this direct observation of water vapor, Europa has made several discoveries. When NASA’s Galileo probe was exploring Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, it approached Europa and detected perturbating changes in Jupiter’s magnetic field. In addition, in 2018, as a result of detailed analysis by the research team, the existence of a geyser came to mind. In 2013, the Hubble Space Telescope detected hydrogen and oxygen, or water, in the atmosphere of Europa. Later, when I photographed the surface of Jupiter again with the Hubble Space Telescope, something in the shape of a projection appeared in the silhouette, and it was considered a geyser.
This direct observation of water vapor was realized with a complex computer-calculated model that separates and observes water vapor contained in the Earth’s atmosphere and water vapor in Europa’s atmosphere. However, in the end, to check the observation information, you have to send a probe directly to observe the phenomenon. The research team is unlikely to have to wait long for this. The Europa Clipper mission, scheduled for launch in 2022-2025, is expected to conduct further investigations of the surface, the inner seabed, and small steam outlets in the Europa atmosphere. Related information can be found here .
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