Key facts about Europa

About Europa: 

• It is the smallest and second nearest of the four large moons (Galilean satellites) discovered around Jupiter by the Italian astronomer Galileo in 1610. 
• Europa is a rocky object covered with an extremely smooth, elaborately patterned surface of ice.
• Europa has a diameter of 3,130 km (1,940 miles), which makes it a little smaller than Earth’s Moon. 
• Europa may be one of the most promising places in our solar system to find present-day environments suitable for some form of life beyond Earth.
  • Scientists believe a saltwater ocean lies beneath its icy shell, holding twice as much water as Earth’s global ocean.
  • It also may have the chemical elements that are key ingredients to life. 
• Europa was first observed at close range in 1979 by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft and then by the Galileo orbiter beginning in the mid-1990s.
• NASA launched Europa Clipper on Oct. 14, 2024, to determine whether there are places below Europa’s surface that could support life.

Q1: What is a satellite?

It is anything that orbits a planet or a star. Earth is a satellite orbiting the Sun. The Moon is a satellite orbiting Earth. When you launch a spacecraft into orbit around Earth, that’s a satellite, too. 

Source: Hunt for life on Jupiter’s moon hits an ice block