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The satellite in point is not for the shy, it seems
The Penitents in happier moments … Training in Chile, Earth
Exploring the Europe of Jupiter's moon will seem to be a tedious task: scientists believe that its surface is covered with sharp icy daggers.
The threatening fragments are known as penitents, according to an article published in Nature Geoscience this week. They normally form in cold, dry climates, where sunlight melts the snow and sublimates it directly to water vapor.
On Earth, these structures have been spotted towards the Sun in the Andes and can reach a height of five meters. Researchers from Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, NASA's Ames Research Center and the University of Virginia in the United States believe that the conditions on Europa can promote the growth of penitents up to ########################################################################## 39, at a height of almost 15 or 50 feet, with a spacing of 7.5 meters. .
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"Europa's unique conditions offer both exciting exploration possibilities and a potentially dangerous hazard," said Daniel Hobley, lead author of the paper and lecturer at Cardiff University.
These blades could complicate the landing of a spaceship on its surface. Space agencies such as NASA are already preparing to explore the extraterrestrial body because Eggheads thinks it is home to a liquid ocean beneath its icy surface and that it has other properties, such as that of the sea. a rocky core, which could make it suitable for supporting extraterrestrial life.
The camera aboard NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which gravitated around Jupiter and its moons until 2003, could not directly capture images of Europa's penitents. Instead, the researchers relied on indirect observations using radar data. They found that regions close to the equator reflected radar waves more easily than its poles, and that reflection patterns explained better by the existence of these ice blades.
NASA plans to send a Europa Clipper spacecraft to explore the moon in 2022 and 2025. Fortunately, it is an orbiter that does not have to land. It will be equipped with a high-resolution camera to capture structures and could help scientists plan follow-up missions. ®
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