Exploratour: NASA's Exploration for Life
The evidence can be consolidated into 3 pieces. Many of these pieces come from study of the Conamara Chaos region. This region is characterized by a thin disrupted ice crust that suggests shifting ice plates much like those found in the Earth's arctic landscapes.
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Lack of craters on the surface
- surface is 10 MY or younger?
- Analysis of the cracks suggests that there might be a layer of brittle ice, less than 1 km thick, above the supposed ocean
- Lots of pits, moats, and domes
- these are holes where the ice has collapsed due to internal geologic activity.
- water has reached surface to form once-again-frozen "ponds"
- there are many examples of "puddle-like" flow
To read more this subject, you may leave the tour and read our section on the recent findings about this moon, or take the Exploratour on the question Does Europa have an Ocean?
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