What it is: Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon. Where it is: About 417,000 miles (671,000 kilometers) from Jupiter and 500 million miles (805 million km) from the sun. When it was shared: May 19, 2024. Why it’s so special: Slightly smaller than Earth’s moon, Europa is more like a planet. It has a magnetic field, a […]
When NASA’s Juno spacecraft performed its closest approach to Jupiter‘s moon Europa in September 2022, it captured evidence not only for pockets of briny water connected to the world’s deep subsurface ocean, but also for potential scars formed by towering plumes of water vapor — and it caught that evidence on camera The majority of […]
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has spotted the elusive fifth moon of Jupiter transiting the giant planet’s Great Red Spot, giving astronomers a rare view of this small but intriguing natural satellite. Jupiter‘s most famous moons are its four Galilean satellites: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, each of which is several thousand kilometers wide. Jupiter’s fifth moon […]
Oh, there it is. Jupiter’s unassuming moon Amalthea was spotted in two recent images captured by NASA’s Juno probe. During its 59th close flyby of Jupiter on March 7, the Juno spacecraft captured its usual stunning views of the giant planet’s swirling winds and colorful belts. The new photos offered an unexpected treat: a rare […]
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Close flybys of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons and the most volcanically active world in our solar system, have revealed a lava lake and a towering feature called “Steeple Mountain” on the moon’s alien surface. NASA’s […]
The four biggest moons of Jupiter aren’t just blurry smudges in Galileo’s telescope anymore. The Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered Ganymede, Callisto, Europa and Io back in 1610, which explains why they’re called the Galilean moons. We’ve learned a lot about these exotic bodies in the past 400 years thanks to ever-improving telescope views and […]
The solar system’s most volcanic body, the moon of Jupiter Io, has been in turmoil for at least 4.57 billion years, right back to its birth and the infancy of the sun. Those are the findings of a team of scientists who examined Io with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to track sulfur and […]
Though it’s still seven years from reaching Jupiter, the JUICE mission is proceeding apace — and a recent test-run simulated the mission’s spacecraft flying by the Jovian icy moon, Callisto. Having blasted off from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana a year ago, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, known as JUICE for short, is still in […]
A single grain of ice ejected from Jupiter‘s ocean moon Europa, if captured by NASA’s forthcoming Europa Clipper spacecraft, could be enough to reveal evidence of alien life, a new experiment suggests. “With suitable instrumentation, such as the SUrface Dust Analyzer on NASA’s Europa Clipper space probe, it might be easier than we thought to […]
Scientists hoping to find life in liquid water oceans beneath the frigid, icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa may get a helping hand from a “cosmic snowball fight” this world once engaged in. Europa has long been considered a prime solar system location to search for evidence of simple life — life as we know […]
A NASA spacecraft dedicated to studying a small ocean world will carry with it a metal plaque etched with the ripples created by the many ways humans say “water.” The Europa Clipper Vault Plate was revealed by NASA on Friday (March 8) at the opening session of the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, […]
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. When NASA’s Europa Clipper aims to launch on its highly anticipated mission to an icy moon in October, the spacecraft will carry a unique design etched with names, poetry and artwork symbolizing humanity. The US space […]