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Europa / jʊˈroʊpə / ⓘ, or Jupiter II, is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 95 known moons of Jupiter. It is also the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System.
Europa orbits Jupiter every 3.5 days and is locked by gravity to Jupiter, so the same hemisphere of the moon always faces the planet. Jupiter takes about 4,333 Earth days (or about 12 Earth years) to orbit the Sun (a Jovian year).
Europa is the fourth largest of Jupiter’s 95 moons. It's the sixth-closest moon to the planet. Europa and Jupiter’s three other largest moons – Io, Ganymede, and Callisto – were the first moons discovered beyond Earth.
4 days ago · Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of those places. It is a long way from the Sun—more than five times farther than the distance between Earth and the Sun. It is so cold on Europa that water on the surface of the moon is frozen as hard as rock. We can usually crack our Earth's winter ice with an ice pick.
May 3, 2023 · Europa is an icy moon of Jupiter and one of the four so-called Galilean moons of Jupiter. See more facts about Europa and its history here.
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Jupiter’s moon Europa is considered one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of present-day life, and a new NASA mission to explore this potential is moving forward from concept review to development.
New comprehensive mapping of the radiation pummeling Jupiter’s icy moon Europa reveals where scientists should look -- and how deep they’ll have to go -- when searching for signs of habitability and biosignatures.
