Amazing close-up images captured of Milky Way moon that NASA hopes has alien life
Fascinating new close-up images of a nearby moon have been captured in the latest investigation into a piece of space rock that NASA hopes could be home to alien life.
NASA has been the leading space exploration agency since the 1950s, producing the first manned mission to Earth's Moon all the way back in 1969.
With a renewed focus on space travel in the modern age - which includes a brand new lunar car to be driven around the Moon - NASA is once again leading the way when it comes to discovering what is lying out there in deep space.
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Central to its work is a focus on finally answering the age old question that has plagued humanity for decades: are we alone in the universe?
Part of the efforts to answer this includes the brand new $5 billion (£3.9 billion) Europa Clipper spacecraft which will finally take to the skies in October this year.
From there, it'll head in to deep space towards Jupiter. It's focus is on Jupiter's moon, Europa, which scientists think could potentially hold evidence of signs to life in the universe.
And the timing couldn't be better after new images of Europa were released by NASA, giving a brand new understanding of what conditions are like on the piece of cosmic rock.
Captured by the American space agency's Juno spacecraft, they have given us a never-before-seen glimpse of Europa.
Critically, the images support the theory that the icy crust at the north and south poles of the moon is not where it used to be.
Juno came within 220 miles of Europa's frozen surface. For context, that's close than the distance between Manchester and London. In getting that close, Juno was able to take the first ever high-resolution images of the moon since the last NASA flyby some 24 years ago.
Taking pictures of Europa near its equator on 12 May, Juno found that along with the expected ice blocks, walls, scarps, ridges, and troughs, the camera also captured irregularly distributed steep-walled dips in the surface, ranging from 12 to 31 miles (20 to 50 kilometers) wide. They resemble large ovoid pits previously found in imagery from other locations of Europa.
A giant ocean is thought to reside below Europa’s icy exterior, and these surface features have been associated with “true polar wander,” a theory that Europa’s outer ice shell is essentially free-floating and moves.
“True polar wander occurs if Europa’s icy shell is decoupled from its rocky interior, resulting in high stress levels on the shell, which lead to predictable fracture patterns,” said Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator who leads planning for JunoCam at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. “This is the first time that these fracture patterns have been mapped in the southern hemisphere, suggesting that true polar wander’s effect on Europa’s surface geology is more extensive than previously identified."
Juno also found evidence of underground liquid water on Europa, as a result of dark stains from potential plumes of water vapour.
But we wont find out for certain or not until the Europa Clipper lands.
It offers humanity the best chance of finding alien life forms in the Milky Way galaxy. Bob Pappalardo, the mission's project scientist, told AFP: "One of the fundamental questions that NASA wants to understand is, are we alone in the cosmos?
"If we were to find the conditions for life, and then someday actually find life in a place like Europa, then that would say in our own solar system there are two examples of life: Earth and Europa.
"That would be huge for understanding how common life might be throughout the universe."
Once landed on Europa - which will happen in 2030 - the spacecraft will analyse icy particles from the moon. From there, the hope is to detect bacteria in the water similar to sphingopyxis alaskensis, a common bacterium in waters off Alaska, which has been the guinea pig during the testing phase of the device.
Tom Earnshaw