There is a 'Salty Moon' in existence

Europa is Jupiter's fourth largest moon with a liquid, salty ocean beneath the icy crust. The new finding suggests it may contain essential ingredients for life.

A new surface detection study of Europa filled with sodium chloride, instant salt. The initial conclusion is that the ocean is hidden beneath Europa's ice sheet, which may resemble Earth much more than previously thought.

Europa's surface is covered with salt.(Photo: Cnet).

The study was published on June 12 in the Science Advances magazine. Scientists at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA say yellow surfaces on the Europa surface, discovered by Voyager and Galileo spacecraft decades ago, have the presence of sodium chloride. .

"Sodium chloride as invisible on the surface of Europa" , NASA said. Only when irradiated, does the color change show its existence.

The team irradiated plain white salt in the laboratory to simulate the conditions available on Europa. They discovered white salt turned yellow, the same yellow discovered by NASA's Galileo spacecraft during photographic missions from 1995-2003.

Then they switched the Hubble Space Telescope to Europa and confirmed that its gold level was irradiated salt.

This is a particularly important finding because it can tell us about the chemistry of the ocean here. If sodium chloride is derived from within Europa, the Moon's ocean may be much more similar to Earth. In the distant future, it may be a place to exploit resources.

However, the authors note that it is unlikely that salt on the surface will definitely represent the nature of the ocean at the bottom of the sea.

Anyway, this study has opened new perspectives on Europa, suggesting that the satellite may even have more geological activity than scientists previously thought.

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