Jupiter's moons hide giant subsurface oceans

tech.hindustantimes.com:

On April 13, 2023, the European Space Agency is scheduled to launch a rocket carrying a spacecraft destined for Jupiter. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – or JUICE – will spend at least three years on Jupiter's moons after it arrives in 2031.

In October 2024, NASA is also planning to launch a robotic spacecraft named Europa Clipper to the Jovian moons, highlighting an increased interest in these distant, but fascinating, places in the solar system.

I'm a planetary scientist who studies the structure and evolution of solid planets and moons in the solar system.

There are many reasons my colleagues and I are looking forward to getting the data that JUICE and Europa Clipper will hopefully be sending back to Earth in the 2030s. But perhaps the most exciting information will have to do with water.

Three of Jupiter's moons – Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – are home to large, underground oceans of liquid water that could support life.

Jupiter has dozens of moons. Four of them in particular are of interest to planetary scientists.

Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are, like Earth's Moon, relatively large, spherical complex worlds. Two previous NASA missions have sent spacecraft to orbit the Jupiter system and collected data on these moons.

The Galileo mission orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003 and led to geological discoveries on all four large moons. The Juno mission is still orbiting Jupiter today and has provided scientists with an unprecedented view into Jupiter's composition, structure and space environment.

These missions and other observations revealed that Io, the closest of the four to its host planet, is abuzz with geological activity, including lava lakes, volcanic eruptions and tectonically formed mountains. But it is not home