The ice moon may be formed by pure underwater snow that floats up rather than falling down.
According to a new study published in the August issue of the journal Astrobiology, "frazil ice," a fluffy collection of ice crystals that also builds up beneath ice sheets on Earth, may have been a factor in the creation of the icy crust of Europa. This frazil ice holds a small amount of the salt found in ice that grows from the ice shelf itself.
One of the things that will govern its potential habitability or even the type of life that may live there is the composition of the ocean.
There are different types of ice formations on the planet.
One of the most intriguing objects in the solar system isEuropa. According to NASA, the moon is covered by an ocean up to 100 miles deep, with a thickness of 15 to 25 miles. According to the space agency, the moon's surface-wide ocean may hold more water than all of Earth's oceans.
The ice moon will be the site of a new NASA mission in October of 2024 to see if it's a good place to live. Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin are leading the development of a radar instrument that will peer into the ice sheet and the ocean.
The researchers were interested in understanding how the ice sheet might be structured.
They looked at the two main ways ice forms under the glaciers. Congelation ice is grown from the ice shelf surface.
The frazil ice forms in cold water and forms into a sheet of ice that becomes trapped under the ice sheets.
The temperature doesn't change much with depth because it has a low temperature gradient.
Frazil ice is common in places where the ice thins in fissures. The composition of the moon's ice shell could be changed if frazil ice is common on the moon.
frazil ice is more pure than congelation ice because it only contains 0.1 percent of the salt in the water.
This low-salt ice could affect how well the Clipper's radar can penetrate the ice.
A research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not involved in the study said that the paper was opening up a lot of possibilities for thinking about ocean worlds and how they work.
How we might prepare for the analysis of the ice is set in motion by this.
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The original article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
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