Hubble telescope spots evidence of water shooting up 160km from Jupiter’s moon Europa

More evidence of possible water plumes erupting from the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has been spotted using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the US space agency said Monday.

Europa, one of more than 50 moons circling the gas giant, is considered by Nasa as a “top candidate” for life elsewhere in the solar system because it is believed to possess a massive, salty, subsurface ocean that is twice the size of Earth’s seas.

The latest finding has given scientists fresh hope that a robotic spacecraft could one day fly past these potential plumes, blasting 160km high, and learn about their contents without having to drill kilometres deep into the moon’s icy shell.

“Today, we are presenting new Hubble evidence for water vapour plumes being expelled from the icy surface of Europa,” William Sparks, astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore told reporters on a conference call.

Using ultraviolet images taken by Hubble, a space telescope that was launched in 1990, the potential plumes are seen around the southern edge of Europa and appear as “dark fingers or patches of possible absorption,” Sparks said.