Researchers model source of eruption on Jupiter's moon Europa

On Jupiter's icy moon Europa, powerful eruptions may spew into space, raising questions among hopeful astrobiologists on Earth: What would blast out from miles-high plumes? Could they contain signs of extraterrestrial life? ...

Underwater snow gives clues about Europa's icy shell

Below Europa's thick icy crust is a massive, global ocean where the snow floats upwards onto inverted ice peaks and submerged ravines. The bizarre underwater snow is known to occur below ice shelves on Earth, but a new study ...

The habitability of Titan and its ocean

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is a hotbed of organic molecules, harboring a soup of complex hydrocarbons similar to that thought to have existed over four billion years ago on the primordial Earth. Titan's surface, however, ...

Heating ocean moon Enceladus for billions of years

Enough heat to power hydrothermal activity inside Saturn's ocean moon Enceladus for billions of years could be generated through tidal friction if the moon has a highly porous core, a new study finds, working in favour of ...

Ocean currents predicted on Enceladus

Buried beneath 20 kilometers of ice, the subsurface ocean of Enceladus—one of Saturn's moons—appears to be churning with currents akin to those on Earth.

Models explain canyons on Pluto's large moon Charon

In 2015, when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft encountered the Pluto-Charon system, the Southwest Research Institute-led science team discovered interesting, geologically active objects instead of the inert icy orbs previously ...

An ocean lies a few kilometers beneath Enceladus's icy surface

With eruptions of ice and water vapor, and an ocean covered by an ice shell, Saturn's moon Enceladus is one of the most fascinating in the Solar System, especially as interpretations of data provided by the Cassini spacecraft ...

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