Nasa’s Galileo spacecraft spent eight years in orbit around Jupiter and made its closest pass over Europa, a moon about the size of our own, on 16 December 1997. They found that a sudden blast of water from the Jovian moon explained the Galileo probe’s strange measurements. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A view of Jupiter’s moon Europa created from images taken by the Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. One Nasa mission, Europa Clipper, is scheduled to launch in the 2020s with the express aim of finding out whether the Jovian moon could harbour life. “Europa is a moon of Jupiter that is about the same size as our moon, but it’s got more ocean on it than planet Earth,” Sparks said.

Source: The Guardian May 14, 2018 15:00 UTC