Europa is venting water into space, old

spacecraft data suggest

The Galileo spacecraft may be dead, but it still has stories to tell. Fifteen years
after the NASA probe burned up in Jupiter’s atmosphere, newly analyzed magnetic
and plasma data from the mission have bolstered evidence that Europa, the
planet’s ice-bound moon, is likely venting water into space.

Researchers have long believed that Europa is home to a vast saltwater ocean,
trapped beneath a thick crust of ice, making the moon potentially habitable for life
and a focus of upcoming robotic exploration. Over the past decade, scientists
using the Hubble Space Telescope have made observations that seemed to
support the notion that Jupiter is venting some of this water to space, much like
Saturn’s moon Enceladus. But many other attempted observations have turned up
dry.

So scientists instead returned to Galileo, which on 16 December 1997 made its

closest approach to Europa, flying only 400 kilometers above its surface. Over the
course of 5 minutes, spikes the spacecraft recorded with its magnetic and plasma
sensors reflected the alterations that a veil of ejected water, from one or many
vents, could cause in a region matching the telescope observations, they report
today in Nature Astronomy. This indicates that a region of the moon potentially
1000 kilometers long could host such activity, though it is impossible to say
whether this is a single plume or many, like the complex system of fractures and
vents seen on Enceladus. Indeed, on its own, this evidence was too weak to tie to
erupting water in a 2001 studydescribing it, the authors add, but it fits well with the
Hubble and modeled evidence.