Three of Jupiter’s moons may hold hidden oceans, making them the targets of ESA’s $1.6 billion Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. ESAJuice
Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, is practically a planet. Larger than Mercury, it is the only moon with its own magnetic field, produced by churning molten iron in its core. Its icy crust, more than 100 kilometers thick, is cut by ridges and grooves, evidence of past tectonic activity. Smooth plains suggest ice-spewing cryovolcanoes may have paved over parts of the moon.
Ganymede’s sister moon, Europa, has long gotten more attention as a possible home for life and is the target of another spacecraft, NASA’s, to launch in October 2024. Europa’s icy shell is much thinner than Ganymede’s, perhaps just 15 kilometers thick, and its ocean may sometimes breach the surface—perhaps even sending plumes of water erupting into space. But Europa orbits closer to Jupiter’s intense radiation field, which would disrupt the electronics of any spacecraft lingering nearby.
Callisto, the most distant of Jupiter’s moons, is another target for Juice. It does not derive much energy from Jupiter’s tidal tugs, and data from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s suggest it never got hot enough to separate into distinct layers, leaving its ice and rock jumbled together. “We think it’s not active at all, a dead moon,” Witasse says.
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