This is an artist's concept of a plume of water vapor thought to be ejected off of the frigid, icy surface of the Jovian moon Europa, located 500 million miles from the sun. NASA, ESA, and K. Retherford hide caption
Europa Europa
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Europa
An artist's rendition of the future Europa Clipper probing Jupiter's moon Europa for potential life. NASA hide caption
New NASA evidence suggests that there's a chemical reaction taking place under the moon's icy surface that could provide conditions for life. NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute hide caption
Europa is believed to have a vast subterranean, saltwater ocean that contains twice as much water as Earth's oceans. NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk hide caption
Congress is requiring NASA to travel to Jupiter's moon Europa by 2022. Currently, it is the space agency's only new mission planned for the outer solar system. NASA/JPL hide caption
A cluster of mysterious bright spots on dwarf planet Ceres can be seen in this image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA hide caption
An image of Europa released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in 1996 by the Galileo spacecraft. NASA says a new probe dedicated to studying the Jovian moon, is going into the development phase. NASA/JPL/AP hide caption
The mosaic was constructed from individual images obtained by the Solid State Imaging (SSI) system on NASA's Galileo spacecraft during six flybys of Europa between 1996 and 1999. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona hide caption