NASA’s Hubble telescope spots potential water plumes on Europa for a second time
There’s more evidence that plumes of water are erupting from underneath the crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa. NASA announced the findings today at a press conference, at the same time that the agency also announced new clues that Saturn’s moon Enceladus may have the right conditions for life.
A possible plume was spotted in 2016 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which is currently in orbit around Earth. At the time, the telescope imaged what looked like a 62-mile-high water plume in ultraviolet light. A similar watery eruption on Europa has been observed before. In 2014, Hubble saw a potential plume that reached 30 miles high, and it was spewing from the same spot as the one in 2016. That means these plumes may be consistently erupting...