Water vapor detected on Jupiter's ocean moon Europa

[Judi Lynn]

By Mike Wall about 10 hours ago

But only on one side of the mysterious moon.



Jupiter's moon Europa, as imaged by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted water vapor on Jupiter's ocean moon Europa, potentially revealing new clues about icy satellites in our solar system and beyond.

Hubble had previously detected water vapor on Europa — in apparent plumes that arise sporadically and temporarily extend perhaps 120 miles (200 kilometers) into space from the moon's icy shell, which overlies a huge, buried ocean of liquid water. But this new finding is something quite different.

Lorenz Roth, a researcher at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, analyzed archival ultraviolet observations of Europa that the Hubble Space Telescope made with its Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph instrument in 1999, 2012, 2014 and 2015.

This analysis revealed the existence of significant amounts of water vapor on Europa's trailing hemisphere — the one that faces away from the moon's orbital path around Jupiter. This water vapor persisted over the long haul, unlike the transient plumes, Roth reported in a study that was published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

More:
https://www.space.com/jupiter-moon-europa-atmosphere-water-vapor?utm_source=notification

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From 2016:

Sep 26, 2016
RELEASE 16-096
NASA’s Hubble Spots Possible Water Plumes Erupting on Jupiter's Moon Europa



https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-hubble-spots-possible-water-plumes-erupting-on-jupiters-moon-europa