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Europa is a moon of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo in 1610. It is the smallest of the Galilean moons and has a thin layer of ice that may hide an ocean of liquid water. The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter project, which would have searched for subsurface oceans, was canceled in 2005.
Europa is one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, discovered by Galileo Galilei using a primitive telescope in 1610. These four moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, are by far the largest natural satellites of Jupiter. Europa is the smallest of the Galilean moons. With a diameter of 3000 km, it is somewhat smaller than Earth’s Moon. Europa is named after a mistress of the god Zeus in Greek mythology. Jupiter, the planet orbiting Europa, is named after the Roman name for Zeus.
When Europa was discovered, it helped verify that planetary bodies, apart from the Sun, exert their own gravity. This helped replace the geocentric view of cosmology with the Copernican heliocentric version. Europa orbits Jupiter about every three days and orbits at a distance from Jupiter just under twice the distance from Earth to the Moon. Like the other Galilean satellites and our Moon, Europa is tidally locked to Jupiter, meaning that the same side always faces it while the other side faces away.
Europa’s appearance is that of a white orb with brown cracks and spots throughout. Composed mostly of silicate rock, Europa has a thin layer of ice, which some planetary scientists believe may hide an ocean of liquid water. Europa has one of the smoothest surfaces in the solar system. Due to the possibility of water oceans, Europa has been a proposed target of a lander probe for several decades, but funding has not yet materialized for a mission. Other moons that may have subsurface oceans include Ganymede and Callisto.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) project, which would have used ice-penetrating radar to search for such oceans, was canceled in 2005 due to a NASA shift in priorities in favor of manned missions. The spacecraft was to have innovative features such as a nuclear fission engine and power source, which would give it a thousand times more electrical power than conventional space probes powered by solar panels and radioelectric thermal generators.
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