Do you love astronomy? Do you also love ice skating? (I’m looking at you, Dr. G..) What if I told you that you could have the best of both worlds? You can(!), albeit approximately 4.2 AU away from Earth.
Enter Europa, Jupiter’s icy sixth (both largest and closest) moon.
Europa is an extremely young moon despite being the second extraterrestrial moon ever discovered, and as such features a liquid water ocean beneath the icy crust, and a layer of volcanic activity beneath the ocean. In addition to its composition, Europa also has several quirky features such as its lineae on its surface, the massive water plumes it fires into space, and an (extremely thin) oxygenated atmosphere. It is this unique composition and its other quirks which give scientists hope that there may be extraterrestrial life here in our solar system beneath the icy surface of Europa.
Currently NASA is investigating the feasibility of landing a probe on Europa, and there are multiple scheduled missions that will collect data on the moon without actually landing on it.
Meanwhile, I’m going to start learning how to ice skate.
Stars on our Helmets, Stars in the Sky 
So that’s how Jupiter’s entertaining itself out there! Europa is so interesting to me because it would be such a different environment for life–much farther from the Sun and therefore less hospitable for complex surface life, as opposed to deep-sea thermophiles.
Also, there’s this…
Monica
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Great blog! The prospects of Europa possibly having life under all that ice is fascinating! However, I am skeptical as to whether or not we will be able to make it there in time for you to be able to skate on it. Keep learning to skate though, the chicks dig ice skating.
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I am a very big fan of this blog! Instead of observing one night lets all go ice skating on Europa!
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