The first of the gas-giant orbiter's back-to-back flybys will provide a close encounter with the massive moon after over 20 years.
Space Exploration
Jun 4, 2021
5
562
In a significant finding in the search for life beyond Earth, scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere have discovered what appears to be a body of liquid water the volume of the North American Great ...
Space Exploration
Nov 16, 2011
30
0
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? ...
Space Exploration
Nov 10, 2020
0
2401
Between 1995 and 2003, NASA's Galileo spacecraft made several flybys of Jupiter's moon, Europa. Several findings from observations of the moon pointed to evidence of a liquid ocean beneath Europa's icy surface. The ocean, ...
Space Exploration
Dec 16, 2018
29
2743
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 ...
Astrobiology
Aug 15, 2022
0
709
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, ...
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2019
0
834
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 ...
Astronomy
Nov 6, 2017
54
424
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.
Planetary Sciences
Mar 25, 2021
0
2537
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 ...
Space Exploration
Jun 22, 2016
13
774
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 ...
Astronomy
Feb 7, 2023
0
652
