Oxygen on Jupiter’s moon Europa is less than we think, there may be possibilities of life – Dainik Savera Times

Although Europa has the three basic ingredients for life – water, the right chemical elements and a source of heat – we do not yet know whether there has been enough time for life to develop. The other leading candidate for the possibility of life in our solar system is Mars, the target of the Rosalind Franklin rover in 2028. Life on Mars may have started at the same time as it did on Earth, but then possibly due to climate change. Stopped.

A third candidate is Saturn’s moon Enceladus where the Cassini-‘Ugens mission discovered plumes of water from a sub-surface salty ocean, which was also exposed to rock on the ocean floor. Titan is a close runner-up in fourth place, with its high atmosphere containing a thick atmosphere of hydrocarbons and organic compounds including tholins. Then they float on the surface and cover it with material necessary for life.

Losing Oxygen:

The Juno mission boasts the best charged particle instruments ever sent to Jupiter. It can measure the energy, direction and structure of charged particles on a surface. Through similar instruments, tholin (a type of organic material) was found on Saturn and Titan. But they also measured particles that indicate atmospheres on Saturn’s moons Rhea and Dione in addition to Titan and Enceladus. These particles are known as pickup ions.

Planetary atmospheres contain neutral particles, but the top of the atmosphere becomes ”ionized” in sunlight (meaning it loses electrons) and through collisions with other particles, ions (charged Atoms that have lost electrons) and form free electrons. When a plasma – a charged gas that forms the fourth state of matter beyond solid, liquid and gas – flows through the atmosphere with newly formed ions, it stirs the atmosphere with electric fields that can accelerate the new ions. , which is the first part of the pickup process of an ion.

The pickup process freed the Martian atmosphere of particles after the Red Planet’s magnetic field was destroyed 3.8 billion years ago. This shows that surface erosion is very low. It may be that the plume’s eruption, orbital position and upstream positions respectively? Increase and decrease the rate at certain times. NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which will launch later this year, and the Juice mission which will make two flybys of Europa in orbit around Ganymede will be able to follow up on these measurements, and provide more information on the potential for life on Europa. .