NASA Finds Signs of Life on Jupiter's Moon Intro
The prospect of alien life in the universe is something that has always piqued the interest
of people across our planet.
While we have mostly associated alien life with probably existing somewhere far away
from Earth, new evidence suggests we may find it a lot closer to home than previously expected.
Scientists have revealed new evidence that Jupiter's icy moon Europa may have harbored
life beneath its surface.
Let's talk about this new evidence and if our search for extraterrestrial life is finally
coming to an end.
Europa Europa is one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter,
along with Io, Ganymede, and Callisto.
Astronomer Galileo Galilei gets the credit for discovering these moons, among the largest
in the solar system.
Europa is the smallest of the four but it is one of the more intriguing satellites.
The surface of Europa is frozen, covered with a layer of ice, but scientists think there
is an ocean beneath the surface.
The icy surface also makes the moon one of the most reflective in the solar system.
Researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope spotted a possible water plume jetting from
Europa's south polar region in 2012.
A different research team, after repeated attempts to confirm the observations, saw
apparent plumes in 2014 and 2016.
The researchers cautioned that the plumes haven't yet been fully confirmed, but they
do provide a suggestion that there is water in Europa's ocean jetting to the surface.
Several spacecraft have done flybys of Europa.
The Galileo spacecraft did a long-term mission to Jupiter and its moons between 1995 and
2003.
Both NASA and the European Space Agency plan missions to Europa and other moons that would
leave Earth in the 2020s.
A prominent feature of Europa is its high degree of reflectivity.
Europa's icy crust gives it an albedo — light reflectivity — of 0.64, one of the highest
of all of the moons in the entire solar system.
Scientists estimate that Europa's surface is about 20 million to 180 million years old,
which makes it fairly young.
Pictures and data from the Galileo spacecraft suggest Europa is made of silicate rock and
has an iron core and rocky mantle, much like Earth does.
Unlike the interior of Earth, however, the rocky interior of Europa is surrounded by
a layer of water or ice that is between 50 and 105 miles.
Due to fluctuations in Europa's magnetic field that suggests the presence of a conductor
of some sort, scientists also think there is an ocean deep beneath the surface of the
moon.
This ocean could contain some form of life.
This possibility of extraterrestrial life is one of the reasons interest in Europa remains
high.
Recent studies have given new life to the theory that Europa can support life.
The surface of Europa is covered with cracks.
Many believe these cracks are the result of tidal forces on the ocean beneath the surface.
It's possible that, when Europa's orbit takes it close to Jupiter, the tide of the sea beneath
the ice rises higher than normal.
If this is so, the constant raising and lowering of the sea caused many of the cracks observed
on the surface of the moon.
Obtaining samples of the ocean may not require drilling through the icy crust, should the
repeated observations of possible plumes turn out to be actual jets of water.
While researchers spotted evidence in 2012, 2014, and 2016, the true nature of the plumes
— and why they appear sporadically — requires more observations.
In 2014, scientists found that Europa may host a form of plate tectonics.
Previously, Earth was the only known body in the solar system with a dynamic crust,
which is considered helpful in the evolution of life on the planet.
Potential for Life A new model from NASA scientists supports
the theory that the interior ocean in Jupiter's moon Europa would be able to sustain life.
In addition, they have calculated that this water, believed to be an ocean under the surface
ice shell, could have been formed by the breakdown of water-containing minerals due to either
tidal forces or radioactive decay.
This work, which is not yet peer-reviewed, may have implications for other moons in the
Solar System.
Europa is one of the largest moons in the solar system.
Since the flybys of the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft, scientists have held that the
surface crust floats on a subsurface ocean.
However, the origins and composition of this ocean have been unclear.
The researchers found that ocean worlds such as Europa can be formed by metamorphism: in
other words, heating and increased pressure caused by early radioactive decay or later
subsurface tidal movement would cause the breakdown of water-containing minerals and
the release of the trapped water.
They also found that this ocean would originally have been mildly acidic, with high concentrations
of carbon dioxide, calcium, and sulfate.
While scientists believed that this ocean could be sulfuric, simulations coupled with
data from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the presence of chloride on Europa's surface,
suggesting that the water is also most likely rich in chloride.
This means that the composition of the water on the moon has become more like the oceans
on Earth.
This leads researchers to believe that this ocean could be quite habitable for life.
Scientists at NASA maintain that Europa remains one of our best chances of finding life in
our solar system.
The agency’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission will launch sometime in the next few years
and the current research on the moon aims to help prepare for this endeavor.
The mission will investigate Europa’s habitability, among other objectives.
Current models suggest that the oceans on other moons such as Europa’s neighbor Ganymede
and Saturn’s moon Titan may also have formed by similar processes.
However, several key points still need to be studied further, such as how fluids migrate
through Europa’s rocky interior.
Current Efforts NASA has recently doubled down on its effort
to find life in the solar system with the extension of both the Juno and InSight missions.
Juno, the agency's mission to Jupiter, will now be dedicated to studying the planet's
moons, including Europa.
InSight, meanwhile, furthers the commitment to bring humans to Mars, and perhaps further
afield.
Juno launched on August 5, 2011, headed toward the largest planet in the Solar System.
The spacecraft has been instrumental in the search for life among the other 8 planets
that make up our cosmic neighborhood.
The spacecraft completes one orbit around Jupiter every 53 days, collecting data on
the gas giant to determine how the planet formed and evolved.
The main objective of the mission so far has been to measure the composition of Jupiter's
atmosphere, determine how much water is in the atmosphere, map the planet's magnetic
field and how its magnetic force affects its atmosphere.
Now, Juno will explore Jupiter's rings and larger moons, and there are flybys planned
for the moons Ganymede, Europa, and Io.
Jupiter has 79 confirmed moons, but those three are by far the most special.
Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, while Ganymede is the largest
planetary satellite yet discovered in the Solar System, with its massive size making
it larger than the planet Mercury and about three-quarters the size of Mars.
Europa however, remains the most intriguing.
Due to the potential existence of a chloride-rich ocean, the craft will extensively study the
moon in an attempt to uncover more information about its habitability.
Until the Europa Clipper mission launches, Juno will continue to study the moon and help
scientists bridge the gap between the two missions.
Europa Clipper As yet, we have no evidence for life on Europa,
but between 50 and 80 percent of life on Earth is in the ocean.
Not only plants, coral, fish, and mammals, but also extremophiles — organisms that
survive in extreme environments.
They live in freezing realms below arctic sea ice and the boiling temperatures and crushing
pressures around deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
Europa also seems to have life's secret ingredient: time.
Earth’s oldest fossils are 3.5 billion years old.
That means life got a foothold on our planet soon after conditions allowed it to survive.
And Europa’s ocean may have existed for billions of years.
Given what we know about the ingredients for life, how quickly life sprung forth on Earth
once conditions allowed it, and that life finds ways to survive in extreme environments,
Europa is the premier place to seek life beyond Earth.
Europa Clipper is our biggest chance of discovering life on the moon.
Europa Clipper originated in a mission that was intended to include participation with
the European Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Recently though, NASA remains the only agency still working on the project.
The current mission plan calls for Clipper to do as many as 45 flybys of Europa at different
altitudes, ranging from 16 miles to 1,700 miles above the moon's surface.
The flybys would make close passes of Europa and then move to a zone much farther away,
where the spacecraft could transmit and receive data from Earth and be prepared for the next
flyby of the icy moon.
Outro As things stand, scientists are waiting for
more data that could confirm or deny the signs of life in our solar system.
If you liked this video, please consider watching this one which talks about NASA and how they
may have found signs of life on Saturn's moon.
Do you think life exists in our solar system other than Earth?
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