Astronomers have detected water vapor on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede for the first time

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Astronomers have detected evidence of water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede for the first time.

Ganymede, the solar system’s largest moon, is covered in an icy crust. Scientists believe that Ganymede may have a liquid ocean 100 miles (161 km) below its surface, and that such an ocean could host alien aquatic life.

NASA announced Monday that by looking through the past two decades of data from the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers have discovered evidence of water vapor in the thin atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon.

This water probably does not come from the subsurface ocean. Instead, the ice will likely evaporate from the moon’s surface.

Although it doesn’t say much about the Moon’s ability to survive in space, this water vapor adds to scientists’ understanding of Ganymede’s atmosphere. Previously, they only knew that it contains oxygen.

(NASA/ESA/Lorenz Roth)

Ganymede’s ultraviolet images from 1998 over Hubble were originally interpreted as exposing atmospheric atomic oxygen, but the new analysis found that differences in the ultraviolet aurora are correlated with Ganymede’s surface temperature rising during the day — exactly when atmospheric water tolerates.

“So far only molecular oxygen has been observed,” Lorenz Roth of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, who led the team that found the vapor, told NASA.

“This results when charged particles erode the surface of the ice.”

The research and datasets have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

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