Jupiter's Moon Europa Produces Less Oxygen Than Thought. What It Means

Although Europa boasts three basic ingredients for life water, the right chemical elements and a source of heat we dont yet know if there has been enough time for life to develop.

Jupiter's icy moon Europa has long been thought of as one of the most habitable worlds in the Solar System. Now the Juno mission to Jupiter has directly sampled its atmosphere in detail for the first time. The results, published in Nature Astronomy, show that Europa's icy surface produces less oxygen than we thought.

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about the possibility of finding microbial life on Europa. Evidence from the Galileo mission has shown that the moon has an ocean below its icy surface containing about twice the amount of water as Earth's oceans. Also, models derived from Europa data show that its ocean floor is in contact with rock, enabling chemical water-rock interactions that produce energy, making it the prime candidate for life.

Telescope observations, meanwhile, reveal a weak, oxygen-rich atmosphere. It also looks as though plumes of water erupt intermittently from the ocean. And there is some evidence of the presence of basic chemical elements on the surface – including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur – used by life on Earth. Some of these could seep down into the water from the atmosphere and surface.