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Summary (Jun 30, 2003): Before interplanetary probes, surprisingly little could be known about Jupiter and its satellites--surprising both because of its size even from a ground telescope and because Galileo himself first saw its satellites centuries ago.
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Galileo and Voyager By Cynthia Phillips, from the SETI Institute's Center for the Study of Life in the Universe
In two previous articles, we considered the Galilean satellites and the fact that tidal flexing, due to their resonant orbits, provides heat for volcanism on Io and could result in the presence of liquid water beneath Europa's icy surface. The Galileo spacecraft, which is currently finishing its mission in the Jovian system, took a number of images of Europa's surface between 1995 and 2001 that can be used to study the geology of this small moon and look for evidence of liquid water beneath the surface.
The Voyager spacecraft took the first close-up images of Europa in the late 1970's. Before Voyager, little was known about Europa's surface except that it was very bright, and measurements taken from Earth with spectrometers on telescopes suggested that there could be water. Images of Europa taken by Voyager revealed a surface covered with crack-like features, and very few impact craters. The lack of craters was surprising, since all bodies in the solar system are continually hit by debris. This process results in a pockmarked surface like the Moon's unless geologic activity takes place to remove craters from the surface. The relative lack of craters on Europa means that the surface is young, perhaps as young as a few tens of million years.
Images of Europa's surface taken by the Galileo spacecraft have shown surface features that could be consistent with the presence of liquid water beneath Europa's surface, but do not prove it
Related Web Pages SETI Institute
Note: Spacecraft
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