Nasa reveals stunning images of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa

Nasa’s latest images of Europa could help set up the Europa Clipper mission of the 2030s, which in turn could help scientists determine whether the moon hosts life

The icy and grooved surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa as seen by Nasa’s Juno probe on 29 September, 2022 (Nasa/JPL)

Nasa revealed the newest close up photo of Jupiter’s icy Moon Europa taken by the space agency’s Juno spacecraft.

Juno flew a close pass of Europa on Thursday, flying within about 219 miles of the icy grooved surface of what is Jupiter’s fourth largest moon. Juno captured as many photos as possible as it shot past at a relative velocity of 14.7 miles per second, according to a Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory blog.

It was the closest pass since Nasa’s Galileo probe flew by Europa in 2000, and the first image beamed back to Earth revealed ridges and troughs in the icy moon’s surface north of its equator in exquisite detail. Nasa will reveal further images from the flyby after further processing.

The fully processed images, when Nasa releases them, will be some of the highest resolution photos of Europa ever taken, with each pixel covering just more than half a mile of the planet’s surface.

“It’s very early in the process, but by all indications Juno’s flyby of Europa was a great success,” Juno principal investigator from Scot Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio Texas, said in a statement. “This first picture is just a glimpse of the remarkable new science to come from Juno’s entire suite of instruments and sensors that acquired data as we skimmed over the moon’s icy crust.”

The data Juno acquired during Thursday’s flyby will help inform Nasa’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2024 and arrive at Europa in 2030.

Scientists believe Europa may harbor a global salty ocean beneath the 10 to 15 miles of icy crust. Since Europa is geologically active due to the immense gravity of nearby Jupiter tugging at the moon’s innards, it’s possible that geothermic vents on that ocean floor could provide the energy and mineralogical conditions favorable for life, similar to the “black smoker” vents on the deep ocean floor of Earth.