Europa (moon)
Europa was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and was named after Europa, the Phoenician mother of King Minos of Crete and lover of Zeus. It is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 79 known moons of Jupiter. No spacecraft has yet landed on Europa; there have been several proposed exploration missions.
About Europa (moon) in brief
Europa was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and was named after Europa, the Phoenician mother of King Minos of Crete and lover of Zeus. It is the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 79 known moons of Jupiter. Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and has a water-ice crust and probably an iron–nickel core. It has a very thin atmosphere, composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is striated by cracks and streaks, but craters are relatively few. In May 2018, astronomers provided supporting evidence of water plume activity on Europa, based on an updated analysis of data obtained from the Galileo space probe, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer is a mission to Ganymede that is due to launch in 2022 and will include two flybys of Europa. NASA’s planned Europa Clipper should be launched in 2025. The Galileo mission, launched in 1989, provides the bulk of current data on Europa. No spacecraft has yet landed on Europa; there have been several proposed exploration missions. In 1892, the discovery of Amalthea, whose orbit lay closer to Jupiter than those of those of Europa, pushed Europa to the third position. In 1979, Voyager probes discovered three more more inner Galilean satellites, so Europa is now counted as Jupiter’s sixth inner satellite. The name Europa is simply referred to its Roman numeral designation as Jupiter II or as the \”second satellite of Jupiter\”; or “Jupiter II” or “Europa II” It has the smoothest surface of any known solid object in the Solar System.
The predominant model suggests that heat from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives ice movement similar to plate tectonics, absorbing chemicals from the surface into the ocean below. Sea salt from a subsurface ocean may be coating some geological features on Europa,. suggesting that the ocean is interacting with the sea floor. This may be important in determining whether Europa could be habitable. Europa, along with Jupiter’s three other large moons, Io, GanyMede, and Callisto, was discovered by Galileo Galileoi on 8 January 1610, and possibly independently by Simon Marius. The first reported observation of Io and Europa was made by Galileo on 7 January 201610 using a 20×-magnification refracting telescope at the University of Padua. In that observation, Galileo could not separate Io, Europa and Europa due to the low magnification of his telescope, so that the two were recorded as a single point of light. The following day, 8 January 1916, Io andEuropa were seen for the first time as separate bodies during Galileo’s observations of the Jupiter system. Europa is the namesake of Europa,. daughter of the king of Tyre, a Phoenicians noblewoman in Greek mythology. Like all the Galilean satellite, Europa is named after Zeus, the Greek counterpart of Jupiter, Europa was courted by Zeus and became the queen ofCrete.
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