NASA scientists confirm the possibility of life on Jupiter's satellite

A model built by scientists of the research institutes of the NASA aerospace agency showed the possibility of the existence of living organisms under the ice of the satellite of Jupiter Europe. The study is published in the journal Science Advances. Europe is the sixth satellite of Jupiter, the size of this celestial body is slightly smaller than the moon. The surface of Europe is covered with ice, scientists believe that under the ice layer is water in a liquid state. In 1989, the NASA Galileo spacecraft was launched to Jupiter. In 1995, this probe entered the orbit of Jupiter, where it worked until 2003. During this time, more than 30 gigabytes of information were obtained from Galileo, including images of Jupiter satellites. A group of scientists led by an employee of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mohit Melvanie Daswani, built a model of the geological structure of Europe based on data collected by Galileo probe instruments. Modeling showed that in the past, the icy waters of Europe contained a large amount of carbon dioxide, calcium and sulfate. However, to date, the ice-covered ocean has become more similar to the earth's, indicating its potential liveability. We associate the greatest chances of detecting life in the solar system with Europe, Daswani emphasized in a comment to the EurekAlert portal. As previously reported by the news agency, in the mid-2020s, NASA plans to send the automatic interplanetary station Europa Clipper to Europe. In October 2019, the scientist of this project, Robert Pappalado, announced that a mass spectrometer installed on board the Europa Clipper would be able to detect the possible presence of microorganisms in the ice and ice waters of this Jupiter satellite.