Jupiter's moon Europa shoots water jets into space - Spiegel Online

From a distance looks of Jupiter’s moon Europa like a big snowball. In the solar system there is hardly any heavenly bodies that have a lighter surface. The reason is that its top layer is made kilometerdickem water ice. How massive the frosty tank is exactly say so far can be difficult. Researchers from ten to fifteen kilometers. Below is a possibly up to 100 kilometers deep ocean of liquid water lie.

A team under the direction of two German researchers are now, however, puts strong indications to suggest that this water reaches not only the surface of the moon, but even up to 200 kilometers wide is ejected into space – at speeds of 700 meters per second as a model calculation revealed. In data from the “Hubble” space telescope scientists at Lawrence Roth and Joachim Saur of the University of Cologne notes they have found on appropriate fountains at the South Pole from Europe. The pictures are from December 2012.

“We have driven the search for water and water fountains with several ‘Hubble’ campaigns,” said Saur. “But only after a camera was repaired at the Space Telescope in one of the last space shuttle missions again, we were able to reach the sensitivity to observe the fountains can.” The researchers presented their results on Thursday at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, also they were zeitgleichvom journal “Science” published.

activity fluctuates

scientists already know a similar case. 2005 discovered the space probe “Cassini” icy fountains at the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. As such, the now presented by Roth and Saur observations seem quite plausible. This is also indicated Nicolas Altobelli by the European Space Agency (Esa), who was not involved in the current work: “The presented scenario sounds very likely, because there are quite similar conditions for Enceladus on Saturn.” The results were “very significant”.

In both cases, at Enceladus and now also in Europe, the fountains do not spray evenly. The activity appears to depend on where the moon is just in relation to its mother planet. The cosmic water games to Europe were only observed when the moon was removed to its slightly elliptical orbit farthest from Jupiter. This is probably the reason why the phenomenon has not previously been observed.

And there’s another thing: the ice fountains of Enceladus known already left a trail after they have left the moon. They provide, among others, one of Saturn’s rings with material. In the case of Europe, such a ring around Jupiter has not yet been discovered. Even observations that relapsing ice particles abrade the polar region of the moon, so to speak, does not yet exist.

The mechanism behind the fountains could work something like this: In the outer regions of our solar system, the influence of radiation of our central star is still very weak. So it needs a different heat source in order to enable the phenomenon. Probably tidal forces ensure that water molecules deep rub under the icy surface of Europe together and heated thereby. Through cracks and crevasses in the ice, the water vapor can escape upwards.

Esa mission to Europe watch

Europe, which is the diameter forth with the Earth Moon comparable, and Enceladus fascinated planetary scientists for quite some time – because their hidden oceans could also offer exotic forms of life a home. “Liquid water is generally considered essential for life – at least life as we know it on Earth – deemed” says Roth, who is now at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas works. “Therefore, the discovery of water vapor fountains puts the moon Europa further into the center of the extra-terrestrial research.”

building blocks of life might once have been deposited by an asteroid or comet on Europe. Evidence of a particularly spectacular crash will present also at the AGU meeting on Friday NASA researcher Jim Shirley’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He claims to have tracked in the old data in 2003 in the Jupiter probe burned up “Galileo” together with colleagues. These are clay minerals, called phyllosilicates. This represented “a new chapter” in the search for life on the moon Europa is, so the researchers.

The relevant infrared images of “Galileo” are from 1998 and have a low resolution by today’s standards. Shirley and his colleagues had them digitally reworked – and were there met with a telltale ring: It has a diameter of 40 kilometers and is located about 120 kilometers away from a known impact craters. The scientists estimate that a 1.7-kilometer comet or a 1.1-kilometer asteroid could be descended there -., And have possibly brought building blocks of life on the icy moon

Esa researcher Nicolas Altobelli believed that heating by tidal forces might frequently occurs in icy moons orbiting gas giant planets. This would also make already known exoplanets again interesting. Because many of them are gas giants, far away draw their courses from their home stars. If they had moons, they could possibly also be friendly to life.

Before further speculation about possible inhabitants of such worlds, one could look at Europe, however, only once. Again and again, aerospace engineers have devised missions, where the icy ocean would be explored with research robots. But more than a few technical finger exercises it has hardly given. Because the journey to Jupiter would be extremely expensive.

After all, the ESA probe “Juice” is to repeatedly fly past the moon Europa after 2030. Dmitry Titov, who at the Esa for “Juice” responsible scientists, hoping that can shortly see the moon’s surface by radar bubbles of liquid water. According to the new results, he looks for it by his own admission a “high probability”.

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