Hopes of finding life on Europa are dashed: study shows Jupiter’s icy moon doesn’t have enough oxygen to sustain aliens

It is hailed as one of the most likely locations for aliens in our solar system.

But unfortunately, a new study casts doubt on whether Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, has the right conditions for life.

Researchers from Princeton University have discovered that there is less oxygen on the moon’s surface than previously thought, which is crucial for cell function.

While it doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of life on Europa, the study says there is “a smaller range to support habitability” than we realized.

The news will come as a blow to space enthusiasts who pin their hopes on Europa, one of the few locations in our solar system with liquid water.

Dr. Jamey R. Szalay, who led the study, said: ‘Unless oxygen production in Europe was significantly higher in the past, the O2 production rates found here provide a narrower range to support habitability than previous model-driven estimates.’

Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon and consists of an icy shell, estimated to be about 10 to 15 miles (16 to 24 kilometers) thick, and a very thin atmosphere, composed mostly of oxygen.

Scientists are almost certain that beneath Europa’s icy surface lies a saltwater ocean with about twice as much water as Earth’s global ocean.

The moon’s surface is constantly bombarded by radiation that breaks the ice crust into oxygen and hydrogen gas.

This gas is largely liberated from the surface, escapes into space, or remains behind to form Europa’s atmosphere.

However, it is thought that these gases can also migrate inwards, towards the subsurface ocean.

That means oxygen produced at the surface could potentially be drawn into the ocean, where it could support life forms.

These life forms can be very small, such as ‘extremophile’ microbes that are invisible to the naked human eye.

Last year, hopes grew even higher when a study found that Europa has CO2 on its surface, which on Earth is a byproduct of cell function.

For the new study, Dr. Szalay and colleagues data from a flyby of Europa performed by the Juno spacecraft on September 29, 2022, during which the spacecraft flew 350 kilometers above Europa’s surface.

They studied data from Juno’s Jovian Auroral Distribution Experiment (JADE) instrument, which detects and measures ions and electrons around the spacecraft.

Based on this data, they calculated that about 12 kilograms of oxygen are produced every second on the European surface.

This is at the lower end of expectations derived from previous models, which ranged from 5 to 1,100 kilograms per second.

“Europe’s atmospheric composition had never been directly sampled and estimates of model-based oxygen production varied by several orders of magnitude,” the authors say.

Moreover, there still needs to be more evidence of how exactly the oxygen on the surface can reach the subsurface ocean.

Previous studies have speculated that pools of saltwater in the shell could act as conduits for transporting oxygen downward as a possible source of metabolic energy for life.

Ultimately, it could be up to future space missions to determine whether Europa is suitable for alien life forms.

In October this year, NASA will send its Europa Clipper spacecraft to investigate whether Europa has the ability to support even the most basic organisms.

It is planned to enter the moon’s orbit and begin its search in 2030, while Juno is still active and will continue to operate until September 2025.

The new study was published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.