Hubble finds more evidence of plumes on Europa

Hubble hasn’t found aliens on Europa, but it may have found new evidence that plumes of salt water from the moon’s globe-spanning salty ocean can escape through cracks in its icy shell.
Using its Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument, Hubble captured far-ultraviolet images of what could be geysers of water from beneath the surface, erupting in Europa’s southern hemisphere. If the features in those images are really geysers, that could be very good news for future missions to Europa, providing an easier source of samples from Europa’s subsurface ocean and making it easier to search for signs of life beneath the ice.

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Kind of annoying that, after twenty years of Europa research by Hubble (on and off) that this pops up now because it is kind of too late to reconfigure the Juno mission to take a close look.

dv said:

Kind of annoying that, after twenty years of Europa research by Hubble (on and off) that this pops up now because it is kind of too late to reconfigure the Juno mission to take a close look.

Agree. But isn’t this already known, plumes escaping from the “tiger stripes”?

mollwollfumble said:

dv said:

Kind of annoying that, after twenty years of Europa research by Hubble (on and off) that this pops up now because it is kind of too late to reconfigure the Juno mission to take a close look.

Agree. But isn’t this already known, plumes escaping from the “tiger stripes”?

Yep. I guess this just counts as “stronger evidence”.