Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is one of the main objects of study in the search for habitable places within the Solar System. Scientists believe that in its great ocean there could be the chemical balance necessary for the existence of life. But, to evaluate this potential habitability, it is necessary to better understand the composition beneath its frozen surface, and the possible presence of essential elements, such as carbon.
Previous work had already detected solid carbon dioxide (CO2), in the form of dry ice, on the surface of Europa. However, it has not yet been possible to determine its origin: whether the CO2 originated in the underground ocean, whether it reached the surface of the moon through meteorite impacts or whether it was produced on the surface through interactions with the moon’s magnetosphere. Jupiter (the region surrounding the planet in which physical phenomena are dominated by its magnetic field).
This Thursday two independent studies published in the journal Sciencebased on recent analyzes of frozen CO2 in Europe, suggest that this element may come from a abundant source of carbon located in the ocean of this star. Europe is believed to have a large mass of salt water beneath its surface, beneath its ice crust. In the first study, researchers from Cornell University have analyzed CO2 on the surface of Europa thanks to near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy data collected with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Based on these observations they were able to map the distribution of carbon dioxide and discovered that the greatest abundance of CO2 is found in Tara Regio. “Tara Regio is a large region with geologically altered terrain on the surface of Europa, in which there may have been an exchange between the subsurface and surface environments,” explains Samantha K. Trumbo, a researcher at Cornell University (USA). “In fact, we know that its composition is different from that of the rest of the terrain, since the Hubble space telescope detected salt (NaCl) in it, which probably derived from the ocean inside it.”
Specifically, it is a region of about 1,800 square kilometers, dominated by a terrain that corresponds to what researchers call “chaos zones”, geologically altered areas that have resurfaced from the interior. According to the authors, the amount of CO2 identified in this region – one of the youngest on the surface of Europe – suggests that it must come from an internal source. That implies that CO2 formed in Europa’s ocean and was brought to the surface on a geologically recent time scale. However, the authors state that the formation of CO2 at the surface from organic compounds or carbonates derived from the ocean cannot be completely ruled out.