Plate tectonics found on Europa

Such active geology suggests that Europa’s icy surface is connected to its buried ocean — creating a possible pathway for salts, minerals and maybe even microbes to get from the ocean to the surface and back again.

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Places have already been spotted on Europa where fresh ice crust is being born, but the latest research is the first to pinpoint where it might be going to die.

But without high-resolution images from more areas, researchers cannot tell whether subduction might also be happening in other locations. If it turns out to be common, it might mean that the moon could be cycling life-friendly compounds between the surface and the deep, and that substantially increases the chance that its ocean is habitable, says Michael Bland, a planetary scientist at the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona.

The discovery adds to excitement set off in December, when scientists reported plumes of water vapour spurting out at Europa’s south pole (L. Roth et al. Science 343, 171–174; 2014). The plumes have not been seen since, and they may or may not be related to Europa’s newly appreciated system of plate tectonics. NASA now needs to figure out what kind of mission might best to explore these discoveries.

Plate tectonics found on Europa

Bill Nye: We May Discover Life on Europa

This plan does not involve landing on Europa and therefore meets the approval criteria from Posthuman Flight Club.

Start sending your empty coffee cups to NASA now, or something.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

USGS Scientific Investigations Map 3292: Geologic Map of Mars

* click through to download a 35MB map sheet. Stick it on your wall, plan your Martian life.

See also:

Ganymede
Io

USGS Scientific Investigations Map 3292: Geologic Map of Mars

Reddish Bands on Europa

This colorized image of Europa is a product of clear-filter grayscale data from one orbit of NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, combined with lower-resolution color data taken on a different orbit.

The blue-white terrains indicate relatively pure water ice, whereas the reddish areas contain water ice mixed with hydrated salts, potentially magnesium sulfate or sulfuric acid.

The reddish material is associated with the broad band in the center of the image, as well as some of the narrower bands, ridges, and disrupted chaos-type features. It is possible that these surface features may have communicated with a global subsurface ocean layer during or after their formation.

The image area measures approximately 101 by 103 miles (163 km by 167 km). The grayscale images were obtained on November 6, 1997, during the Galileo spacecraft’s 11th orbit of Jupiter, when the spacecraft was approximately 13,237 miles (21,700 kilometers) from Europa. These images were then combined with lower-resolution color data obtained in 1998, during the spacecraft’s 14th orbit of Jupiter, when the spacecraft was 89,000 miles (143,000 km) from Europa.

Three outta Four ain’t bad.

Uranus and its five major moons are depicted in this montage of images acquired by the Voyager 2 spacecraft.

The moons, from largest to smallest as they appear here, are Ariel, Miranda, Titania, Oberon and Umbriel.

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