ESA’s and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is not stopping to bear scientific fruit. As they have just reported, the latest of their findings has been the discovery of eruptions of water vapor from the surface of Europa, one of the main moons of Jupiter that is covered by a thick layer of ice.
It is not the first time that this type of activity has been detected outside the Earth. In fact, NASA’s Cassini probe already observed in 2005 this type of plume on the surface of one of the main moons of Saturn, Enceladus. However, on this occasion the main difference with the previous discovery is the absence of ice and dust, which is simply water vapor expelled up to 200 kilometers.
But if Europa has a very thick layer of ice on the surface, how can it be that it expels water vapor? As the researchers explain, fissures in the surface of an icy zone have also been photographed near the south pole of Enceladus by the Cassini probe. In the case of Europa, geysers only manifested when the moon was farthest from Jupiter (the apocenter) and not when it was closer to it. As the lead author of the study, Lorenz Roth, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas points out, “ the source of energy that produces these plumes is probably the force of the tide, which opens and closes fractures in the surface . When Europe is in the apocenter, the cracks are open ”.
Likewise, Roth explains that “the discovery that water vapor is expelled near the south pole reinforces the option of Europa as the main candidate to host vine “. At the same time, the researcher points out that there are many unknowns about these water vapor geysers, because “we do not yet know if these plumes are connected to liquid water or not.”
