Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has an ocean beneath a crust of water ice. Solid carbon dioxide has previously been observed on the surface, but the source was unknown. Two teams analyzed infrared spectroscopic data of Europa from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to investigate the source of carbon dioxide.
Beneath a crust of solid water ice, Europa is thought to have a subsurface ocean of salty liquid water.
Because of this, Europa is a prime target in the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System.
Assessing this deep ocean’s potential habitability depends on its chemistry, including the abundance of biologically essential elements like carbon.
Previous research has identified the presence of carbon dioxide ice on Europa’s surface, but it has not been possible to establish whether carbon dioxide originated from the subsurface ocean, was delivered to the moon’s surface by meteorite impacts, or was produced on the surface through interactions with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
Determining the source of carbon dioxide could constrain the chemistry of Europa’s internal ocean.
“On Earth, life likes chemical diversity — the more diversity, the better,” said Dr. Geronimo Villanueva, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
“We’re carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa’s ocean will help us determine whether it’s hostile to life as we know it, or if it might be a good place for life.”
“We now think that we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa’s surface came from the ocean. That’s not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element,” said Dr. Samantha Trumbo, a researcher at Cornell University.
In their two studies, the authors analyzed near-infrared spectroscopy of carbon dioxide on Europa’s surface, obtained with Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec).
In the first study, Dr. Trumbo and her colleague, Caltech researcher Michael Brown, used the Webb…
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