New evidence has shown that Jupiter’s icy moon Europa throws jets of water out into space.
Scientists first reported the behaviour in 2013 using the Hubble telescope, but have now made a follow-up sighting.
It is significant because Europa is one of the most likely places to find microbial life beyond Earth because of its huge ocean of liquid water.
Flying through the jets with an instrumented spacecraft would be an effective way to test the possibility.
Scientists are also looking at the possibility of attempting to capture a sample of water and bring it back to Earth for more detailed biological analysis.
The suggestion is that the jets reach several hundred kilometres in height before then falling back on to Europa.
The calculation based on the 2013-reported work estimated a volume of water equivalent to an Olympic swimming pool could be being spewed into space about every eight minutes.
16 Responses
I bet it would be cool to see
That would be awesome if they could examine the water!
They could examine the water
That would be cool to see
sounds pretty call to me
Wow!I have never heard of Europa having water coming.That would be cool to see
wow i never new that
that is pretty neat
so cool
how did they do that
how do they do that
i bet that there is more on other planets
Thats wierd.
i bet that it was cool to see thro the telscop
i want to see this it seems really cool.
I wolde love to see that