Possible water plumes on icy moon Europa

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took direct ultraviolet images of the icy moon Europa transiting across the disk of Jupiter.  Watch the video…

Out of ten observations, Hubble saw what may be water vapor plumes on three of the images. This adds another piece of supporting evidence to the existence of water vapor plumes on Europa – Hubble also detected spectroscopic signatures of water vapor in 2012.

Possible water plumes on icy moon Europa

The existence of water vapor plumes could provide a future Europa flyby mission the opportunity to study the conditions and habitability of Europa’s subsurface ocean.

Possible water plumes on icy moon Europa

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Katrina Jackson