The James Webb Space Telescope has identified carbon dioxide originating from the salty liquid oceans of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
Scientists have been aware for a while that oceans of water lie beneath the icy shell of Europa but didn’t know if these oceans had the suitable chemistry to support life. Thus, the invention of carbon — an important element in living things — from this subsurface ocean on one in all Jupiter’s moons has essential implications for the potential habitability of this moon and is a testament to the groundbreaking science being made possible by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
“On Earth, life likes chemical diversity — the more diversity, the higher. We’re carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa’s ocean will help us determine whether it’s hostile to life as we comprehend it or whether it is likely to be an excellent place for all times,” research lead creator and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center scientist Geronimo Villanueva said in an announcement. “This means that we may have the ability to learn some staple items in regards to the ocean’s composition even before we drill through the ice to get the total picture.”
Related: Surprise! Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa may not have a completely formed core
Much more exciting, the team was in a position to use observations made in infrared with the JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument to find out that the carbon molecules weren’t delivered to Europa via meteorite impacts or other external sources.
“We now think that now we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa’s surface got here from the ocean. That is not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element,” lead creator of a second paper detailing this discovery and Cornell University researcher Samantha Trumbo said.
The JWST observed that the carbon dioxide around Europa, the smallest of the 4 large Galilean moons of Jupiter, is most abundant in a geologically young region called Tara Regio. Surface ice has been disrupted at this so-called “chaos terrain” area, indicating that material has been exchanged between Europa’s icy surface and its subsurface ocean.
“Previous observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show evidence for ocean-derived salt in Tara Regio,” Trumbo continued. “Now we’re seeing that carbon dioxide is heavily concentrated there as well. We expect this suggests that the carbon probably has its ultimate origin in the inner ocean.”
The detection of carbon dioxide on Europa will probably be barely bittersweet for Villanueva and his team, who were also using the JWST to hunt for plumes of matter erupting from the surface of the Jovian moon, something the powerful space telescope didn’t see.
The plumes were tentatively detected in 2013, 2016, and 2017, and the very fact the JWST failed to substantiate their existence does not imply they are not present around Europa.
“There’s all the time a possibility that these plumes are variable and that you would be able to only see them at certain times,” Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, JWST interdisciplinary scientist Heidi Hammel said. “All we are able to say with 100% confidence is that we didn’t detect a plume at Europa once we made these observations with the JWST.”
Nevertheless, the remark of carbon dioxide on Europa is a testament to the ability and utility of the James Webb Space Telescope.
“These observations only took just a few minutes of the observatory’s time,” Hammel, who leads the JWST’s Cycle 1 Guaranteed Time Observations of the Solar System, added. “Even on this short time period, we were in a position to do really big science. This work gives a primary hint of all of the amazing solar system science we’ll have the ability to do with the JWST.”
The findings have essential ramifications for other missions in the longer term, as well. In October 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which is able to journey to the Jovian moon system to conduct an in depth survey of Europa to find out if its subsurface oceans could support life.
The JWST findings from these two teams could also help inform the investigation of Jupiter and its moons by the European Space Agency (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission. JUICE was launched in April 2023 on a 7.5-year journey to Europa and its fellow large Jovian satellites, Callisto and Ganymede, which each also bear vast oceans, in addition to making essential observations of Jupiter itself.
“That is a fantastic first results of what the JWST will bring to the study of Jupiter’s moons,” research co-author and ESA Research Fellow Guillaume Cruz-Mermy said. “I’m looking forward to seeing what else we are able to study their surface properties from these and future observations.”
The 2 teams’ research was published in two papers within the Sept. 21 edition of the journal Science.