Geysers on Europa called into question
DEC 19, 2014
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028514
New Scientist : Despite the detection by the Hubble Space Telescope last year of 200-km-high water jets erupting from the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, no evidence of such a geyser has been seen since. Donald Shemansky, of the University of Southern California, reported the finding at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco on 18 December. Furthermore, data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which flew by Jupiter in 2001, have failed to confirm the existence of the watery plumes. Either a mistake was made or the phenomenon is very rare, says Robert Pappalardo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
© 2014 American Institute of Physics
