Page 29 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

Europa
Europa, the fourth largest of Jupiter’s moons, is 3,138 km across and orbits some 671,000 km from Jupiter. Its density of 3 g/cm3 suggests that it is mainly made of rock with an icy surface.
Europa has a smooth, uncratered surface. As on Io, this suggests that the surface is recent. In this case it would appear that the water under the ice must pour out onto the surface from time to time, spreading out and then refreezing.
The dark lines, thousands of kilometres long, appear to form a net stretching across Europa’s surface. It is possible that they could be cracks in the rock below the ice.
core, shown in gray, is thought to be surrounded by shells of water in ice or liquid form (shown in blue and white).
core The central region of a body.
density A measure of the amount of matter in a space.
 Evidence has shown that Europa may have a deep melted ocean under its icy shell.
 The Minos Linea region on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
The imaging shows up the
translucent nature of the icy surface
of the moon, with brown and red lines in the ice. The area covered is about 1,260 km across.
 The spots and pits visible in this region
of Europa’s northern hemisphere are
each about 10 km across. The dark spots
are called lenticulae (Latin for freckles).
Their similar sizes and spacing suggest
that Europa’s icy shell may be churning
away like a lava lamp, with warmer ice moving upward from the bottom of the ice shell, while colder ice near the surface sinks downward. These lenticulae may hold clues to the composition of a possible ocean under the surface and to whether it could support life.
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 Europa’s metallic (iron, nickel)