NASA's Hubble Telescope spots possible water plumes on Europa

NASA has announced that water could be spewing from the surface of one of Jupiter's moons.
This has sent the scientific community into a frenzy of excitement as wherever there's liquid water on Earth, there is life.
Kim Mok-yeon reports.

NASA says its Hubble Space Telescope has imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off Europa, which lends further evidence for the existence of a deep, saline ocean under the moon's icy surface.
The telescope made its latest observation by studying Europa as it passed in front of Jupiter.
It looked in ultraviolet wavelengths to see if Jupiter's light was in any way being absorbed by material coming from the moon's surface.
In three of ten attempts, Hubble detected what appeared to be "dark fingers" extending from the edge of Europa.
NASA says the plumes provide a tantalizing opportunity to gather samples originating from Europa without having to land or drill through the ice.
Previous findings had pointed to the existence of an ocean under Europa's icy crust, but it was thought teams would have to drill through the thick layer of ice before any signs of life would be detectable.
The latest findings also provide supporting evidence for previous detections of water plumes on Europa by Lorenz Roth of the Southwest Research Institute in Texas.
In 2012,... Roth's team detected evidence of water vapor erupting from the south polar region of Europa, the same region where three more observations were made in 2014.
First discovered in 1610, Europa is the sixth largest moon in the solar system.
Kim Mok-yeon, Arirang News.

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