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Space

Probe saw plumes on Europa 20 years ago - we just didn't notice

By Leah Crane

14 May 2018

New Scientist Default Image

Artist’s representation of the plumes that the Galileo probe may have flown through in 1997

NASA

The long-dead Galileo spacecraft may have flown right through a plume of water spurting up from the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. A new analysis of 20-year-old data shows just that, adding evidence that the much-contested fountains actually exist there.

In the late 1990s, the Galileo probe detected an unusually warm area on Europa’s surface. Astronomers connected that anomaly to a potential plume of water emerging from the moon’s subsurface ocean. In recent years, images…

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