Where are we likely to find life in our Solar System outside of Earth? Mars, Venus, or maybe even Europa? A moon of Jupiter. T
The more we study the moons of the gas giants, the more they surprise us, with Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan turning out to look like pretty good candidates for finding life. Enceladus even has plumes, big geysers of water, coming from its poles suggesting there’s a liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust. The Cassini mission even flew through those plumes and found that water even contains the building blocks for life.
And there’s a lot of moons that also have this icy crust that are thought to be hiding a liquid water ocean underneath them. One of those is in orbit around Europa, which is why NASA have decided to send the Europa Clipper mission to investigate which launches very soon in October 2024, but won’t arrive at the Jupiter system until 2030.
And it’s main mission is to work out if Europa is habitable to life or not?