On September 29, 2022, NASA’s Juno spacecraft made its closest flyby of Europa, coming within 220 miles (355 kilometers) of the frozen surface of the Jovian moon. A close-up view of Europa has revealed incredible details of the moon’s chaotic terrain that suggest its icy crust is not where it used to be. The images also showed a newly discovered feature that was dubbed “Birdhole” because of its odd shape.
The findings, made possible by the JunoCam images, were recently published in Planetary Science Journalwhile the results obtained from the spacecraft’s high-resolution images captured by its Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) were published in the journal JGR Planets.
Europa is thought to hide a salty ocean beneath its icy crust that contains twice as much water as all of Earth’s oceans combined, according to NASA. The moon’s rugged terrain includes intricate networks of ridges and dark spots, suggesting possible plumes of water vapor that could be vented into space.
The black-and-white image of Europa’s surface was taken by Juno’s SRU during the close flyby and reveals a region criss-crossed by a network of fine furrows and twin ridges, or pairs of long parallel lines, indicating elevated features in the ice. The small white dots seen in the image are high-energy, penetrating particles that result from the harsh radiation environment around the Moon. Meanwhile, the dark spots may be related to the bubbling of liquid from beneath the ice (also known as cryovolcanic cloud activity).
In the lower right corner of the image is the platypus, which is 42 miles (67 kilometers) at its widest. It features prominent ridges and dark reddish-brown, lumpy matrix material filled with blocks of ice measuring between 0.6 to 4.3 miles (1 to 7 kilometers) wide.
Around the edges of the Platypus the ridge formations collapse into the distinct feature. These formations support the theory that the moon’s icy mantle may be retreating into regions where pockets of salty water from the subsurface ocean lurk beneath the surface. “These features suggest present-day surface activity and the presence of Europa’s subsurface liquid water,” said Heidi Becker, co-principal investigator for the SRU at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in statement.
Images captured by the Juno spacecraft’s visible-light camera, JunoCam, reveal the fractures, ridges and striations that criss-cross the moon’s surface in great detail. These features on Europa’s surface have erased terrain older than about 90 million years, according to NASA.
These surface features support the theory that Europa’s outer ice sheet is moving and essentially free-floating. The “true polar drift” theory, as it is known, claims that the ice crust at Europa’s north and south poles is not where it used to be.
“True polar wander occurs if Europa’s ice shell separates from its rocky interior, causing high stress levels on the shell, leading to predictable fracture patterns,” Juno co-investigator Candy Hansen, who led planning for JunoCam at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said in a statement. “This is the first time these fracture patterns have been mapped in the Southern Hemisphere, suggesting that the effect of true polar wander on Europa’s surface geology is more extensive than previously identified.”
JunoCam images have prompted a reassessment of a remarkable feature on Europa’s surface. Hansen noted that Gwern, originally thought to be a 13-mile (21 km) wide impact crater, actually crosses ridges, creating an oval shadow.
NASA’s Juno mission launched in 2011 to explore Jupiter and its various moons. Europa is of particular interest to scientists as they want to know if life might have evolved on the icy moon. That’s why the Moon is getting more spacecraft to explore its strange features. of NASA Europa Clipper mission is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2030 and study Europa’s magnetic field to confirm whether an ocean really exists beneath its icy crust. The The European Space Agency’s JUICE mission is on its way to the Jovian system to explore the gas giant and its three oceanic moons.
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