A view of Jupiter's moon Europa created from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990's | Photo Credit: NASAmore-inA new look at old data is giving scientists a fresh reason to view Europa, a moon of Jupiter, as a leading candidate in the search for life beyond Earth, with evidence of water plumes shooting into space. Ingredients of life“We know that Europa has a lot of the ingredients necessary for life, certainly for life as we know it. The findings support other evidence of plumes from Europa, whose ocean may contain twice the volume of all Earth's oceans. Europa is considered among the prime candidates for life in our solar system, but is not the only one. For example, NASA's Cassini spacecraft sampled plumes from Saturn's ocean-bearing moon Enceladus that contained hydrogen from hydrothermal vents, an environment that may have given rise to life on Earth.

Source: The Hindu May 15, 2018 08:37 UTC