According to NASA astronomers, evidence of water vapor has been discovered in the atmosphere of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. The water vapor forms when ice from the moon's surface sublimates.
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The discovery was made by scientists who used new and archival datasets from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Nature Astronomy published.
Ganymede is located half a billion miles away from Earth and was seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1996, with the first ultraviolet images being taken in 1998. Those images helped lead to the discovery of the water vapor. Galileo Galilei first discovered the moon in 1610.
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Hubble followed changes on the moon and revealed other characteristics at both ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths.
Previous studies of the moon have now offered evidence that Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, contains more water than all of the Earth's oceans, NASA reported. Nevertheless, due to the temperatures on the surface of the moon, the water is frozen solid. So astronomers went through observations from the last two decades to find evidence of water vapor.
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This discovery adds anticipation to the European Space Agency's new mission, JUICE, which stands for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer. JUICE is the first large-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program.
The launch is currently planned for 2022 and is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2029 while spending at least three years making detailed observations of the three largest moons orbiting Jupiter. Emphasis will be made on Ganymede as a planetary body and potential habitat.
NASA's Juno mission is currently taking a close look at the moon and recently released new imagery. Juno has been studying Jupiter and its environment, also known as the Jovian system, since 2016.
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