Exploratour - The Surface of Europa

This is a Europa collage taken by the Galileo spacecraft .
Click on image for full size
NASA

Exploratour: NASA's Search for Life

This is a collage of some of the photos taken by the Galileo spacecraft. Many of these photos were of a discovery nature - that is, scientists did not know what to expect when they took the pictures. To their surprise, there were aspects of the pictures which suggested that there might be an ocean buried under the ice. Such an ocean might harbor life. Right now, scientists have not proven with scientific certainty that there is an ocean. There are many points of circumstantial evidence which suggest that an ocean does exist, however.

We will walk you through the discovery photos of Europa and describe what they tell us about Europa now. We conclude with why scientists want to return to search for life on Europa. Read more about the search for life by leaving this tour and linking to the Exploratout: NASA's Exploration for life, found at the bottom of this page.

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