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(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute) NASA's Juno spacecraft made a close flyby of Jupiter's intriguing moon Europa in 2022, revealing potential hints of present day surface activity. The spacecraft's Stellar Reference Unit (SRU), which is a star camera designed to assist Juno's onboard attitude determination, was used to image Europa's surface with high resolution while being lit up by Jupiter-shine, or sunlight scattered off Jupiter. The SRU image from the flyby is explored in an article published in the journal JGR Planets on Dec. 22, 2023. The image shows an oddly-shaped area of the icy surface, measuring 23 miles by 42...

NIRCam (the Near Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured this picture of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Webb identified carbon dioxide on the icy surface of Europa that likely originated in the moon’s subsurface ocean. Photo courtesy of NASA Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows carbon dioxide on a region of Jupiter's moon Europa, suggesting it potentially could harbor conditions suitable for life. Astronomers found carbon dioxide on the icy surface of a region called Tara Regio, and analysis from two studies suggests it likely originated in the moon's subsurface...

Dear Bark EUROPA Community, We regret to inform you that an accident has occurred during the maintenance period in Cape Town, resulting in Bark EUROPA partly falling over while attempting to be placed back into the water from the drydocks. We want to assure you that the safety and well-being of our crew and guests are our utmost priority. All crew members have safely left the ship, one sailor has been injured. He is currently in stable condition and receiving appropriate medical care. The extent of the damage to the ship is still being assessed, and at this moment, we...

Sent primarily to investigate the origin and evolution of Jupiter, Juno has been able to take in bonus observations of the planet's four major moons - Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and now Io. It performed its close flyby of Ganymede in 2021, and of Europa earlier this year. These passes produced some novel insights from Juno's microwave radiometer. Intended to look deep into the clouds of Jupiter, this instrument has also been able to see down through the ice layers of Ganymede and Europa for tens of kilometres. These two moons are of particular interest because they're both thought to hide...

Explanation: Jupiter and its moons move like our Sun and its planets. Similarly, Jupiter spins while its moons circle around. Jupiter’s rotation can be observed by tracking circulating dark belts and light zones. The Great Red Spot, the largest storm known, rotates to become visible after about 15 seconds in the 48-second time lapse video. The video is a compilation of shorts taken over several nights last month and combined into a digital recreation of how 24-continuous hours would appear. Jupiter's brightest moons always orbit in the plane of the planet's rotation, even as Earth’s spin makes the whole system...

Citizen scientists have created deep-space portraits of Jupiter’s moon Europa that are not only awe-inspiring, but also worthy of further scientific scrutiny. Science enthusiasts have processed the new JunoCam images of Jupiter’s icy moon, with results that are out of this world. Citizen scientists have furnished unique perspectives of the recent close flyby of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. By processing raw images from JunoCam, the spacecraft’s public-engagement camera, members of the general public have created deep-space portraits of the Jovian moon that are not only spectacular, but also worthy of further scientific investigation. “Starting with our...

The Juno space probe has sent back the first image it captured as it flew by Jupiter's icy moon Europa, the sixth-largest moon in our solar system. Europa is a little smaller than our own satellite and is believed to host a salty ocean below its miles-thick ice shell. Juno launched from Cape Canaveral on August 5, 2011, and entered Jupiter's orbit on July 5, 2016. In 2021, the probe sent back its first images of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon. During the flyby of Europa on September 29, the probe came within about 219 miles of the icy moon. It...

One of Jupiter's tenuous rings can be seen in this infrared image. (NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Judy Schmidt) Given its similarities to its neighbor, Saturn, it seems natural to ask why Jupiter doesn't also have a magnificent, extensive system of visible rings. Alas, it's not the reality. While Jupiter does have rings, they're thin, tenuous, flimsy things of dust, visible only when back-lit by the Sun. According to new research, these discount rings lack bling because Jupiter's posse of chonky Galilean moons keep discs of rock and dust from accumulating the way they do around Saturn. "It's long bothered me why Jupiter doesn't have...

Explanation: What are those spots on Jupiter? Largest and furthest, just right of center, is the Great Red Spot -- a huge storm system that has been raging on Jupiter possibly since Giovanni Cassini's likely notation of it 357 years ago. It is not yet known why this Great Spot is red. The spot toward the lower left is one of Jupiter's largest moons: Europa. Images from Voyager in 1979 bolster the modern hypothesis that Europa has an underground ocean and is therefore a good place to look for extraterrestrial life. But what about the dark spot on the upper...

Europa, a 1931 anti-fascist film made by a Polish Jewish couple that was thought destroyed by the Nazis, has been restored and was shown this week for the first time in 80 years. The film, shot in Stefan and Franciszka Themerson’s bedroom in Warsaw, was based on Anatol Stern’s 1925 same titled poem, and was a statement about Europe’s increasing descent into violence and chaos. ..... The 12-minute film, making use of collages and photograms, is considered Poland’s first famous avant-garde film. n 1938, the couple fled to France where they left all five copies of their movie with Paris’s...

NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for Earth’s first mission to conduct detailed investigations of Jupiter's moon Europa. The Europa Clipper mission will launch in October 2024 on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The total contract award amount for launch services is approximately $178 million. Europa Clipper will conduct a detailed survey of Europa and use a sophisticated suite of science instruments to investigate whether the icy moon has conditions suitable for life. Key mission objectives are to produce high-resolution images...

This illustration of Jupiter's moon Europa shows how the icy surface may glow on its nightside, the side facing away from the Sun. Variations in the glow and the color of the glow itself could reveal information about the composition of ice on Europa's surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech ======================================================================= As the icy, ocean-filled moon Europa orbits Jupiter, it withstands a relentless pummeling of radiation. Jupiter zaps Europa's surface night and day with electrons and other particles, bathing it in high-energy radiation. But as these particles pound the moon's surface, they may also be doing something otherworldly: making Europa glow in the...

Nasa is expected to make an announcement about 'surprising activity' on Jupiter's moon, Europa, on Monday. Many speculated that Nasa could finally be announcing evidence of life beyond Earth. The space agency, however, has poured cold water over these claims, tweeting that the much anticipated announcement will not be related to aliens.

Explanation: What are those spots on Jupiter? Largest and furthest, just right of center, is the Great Red Spot -- a huge storm system that has been raging on Jupiter possibly since Giovanni Cassini's likely notation of it 355 years ago. It is not yet known why this Great Spot is red. The spot toward the lower left is one of Jupiter's largest moons: Europa. Images from Voyager in 1979 bolster the modern hypothesis that Europa has an underground ocean and is therefore a good place to look for extraterrestrial life. But what about the dark spot on the upper...

If there is life in the Solar System outside of Earth, Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus are two of the most likely spots to hold them. However, any extraterrestrial creatures on these celestial objects probably are not related to us, according to a new study. The research, presented at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union by Purdue University geophysicist Jay Melosh, looked at the idea of "lithopanspermia," an idea that life hopped from one planet to another via rocks that were ejected into space, according to Space.com, which first reported the news. [snip] In June,...

NASA has a message for space lovers this month: Look up. The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, will be clearly visible June 10 — and to see its biggest moons you'll only need to grab a pair of binoculars. NASA said the gas giant is at its "biggest and brightest this month" and will be visible all night. The planet will reach opposition, the annual occurrence when the Jupiter, Earth and the Sun are arranged in a straight line, with Earth in the center. So, mark your calendars for Monday, as it will be the best time of...

Plumes are common throughout the solar system. Jupiter's moon Io is constantly shooting volcanic material into the air. Saturn's icy moon Enceladus famously blasts water vapor and other material from its subsurface ocean into space via a set of geysers near the south pole. And Earth is rich in geysers, from Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful to Iceland's Great Geysir. Firing off the gas that makes up these plumes requires an energy source, which usually heats up the ground around the plume source. Enceladus, Io and Earth all have hotspots around their geysers and volcanoes. But not Europa, as far...

On Earth, the sublimation of massive ice deposits at equatorial latitudes under cold and dry conditions in the absence of any liquid melt leads to the formation of spiked and bladed textures eroded into the surface of the ice.Known as penitentes, these sublimation-sculpted blades grow to between 3 to 16 feet (1-5 m) tall, but they are restricted to high-altitude tropical and subtropical conditions, such as in the Andes.Europa, however, has the perfect conditions necessary for penitentes to form more uniformly — its surface is dominated by ice.It has the thermal conditions needed for ice to sublime without melting; and...

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft surprised scientists when it revealed that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede generated its own magnetic field. But new research shows Ganymede also creates incredibly powerful waves that rocket particles to enormous energies. Scientists revealed these huge electromagnetic waves while studying old data from Galileo, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. The observations show another wild way that a moon can interact with the magnetic field of its planet. Jupiter’s radius is around 11 times that of Earth, but it is perhaps 20,000 times more magnetic. This generates an intense radiation environment around the planet. Typically, these waves around...

Just because Jupiter's moon Europa is coated in ice doesn't mean all that ice is the same temperature. And now, scientists have mapped the hot and cold spots on the moon's surface using data gathered from Earth, with accuracy down to 125 miles (200 kilometers). While most of the temperature variations they measured can be explained by sunlight's influence on the ice, there's one unusually cold spot that is stumping the scientists behind the new research. That spot, which falls on the moon's northern hemisphere, stood out in images taken at different times of the day, which surprised the scientists....