NASA’s Juno mission measures oxygen production at Jupiter’s moon Europa

LOS ANGELES, March 5 (Xinhua) — Scientists with NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter have calculated the speed of oxygen being produced on the Jovian moon Europa to be considerably lower than most earlier research, in keeping with new findings.

The ice-covered Jovian moon generates 1,000 tons of oxygen each 24 hours — sufficient to maintain 1,000,000 people respiratory for a day, in keeping with the analysis revealed Monday in Nature Astronomy.

The findings had been derived by measuring hydrogen outgassing from the icy moon’s floor utilizing knowledge collected by the spacecraft’s Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment instrument.

Scientists consider that a number of the oxygen produced by the moon might work its means into its subsurface ocean as a attainable supply of metabolic vitality.

With an equatorial diameter of three,100 kilometers, Europa is the fourth largest of Jupiter’s 95 identified moons and the smallest of the 4 Galilean satellites, in keeping with NASA.

Scientists consider an unlimited inside ocean of salty water lurks beneath its icy crust, and they’re curious in regards to the potential for life-supporting circumstances to exist under the floor.

The Juno mission was launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Drive Station in Florida on Aug. 5, 2011, and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016 after a five-year, 1,740-million-mile journey. The mission goals to discover the origin and evolution of Jupiter, the photo voltaic system, and big planets throughout the cosmos.

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