Jupiter's Ocean Moon Europa Is Ready for Its Close-up

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October 13, 2022

Dear Reader, This week, we're seeing "an old friend with a new haircut": Jupiter's icy, ocean-bearing moon Europa, which was recently visited by NASA's Juno spacecraft in a flyby that provided the best-in-a-generation images of the satellite's surface, revealing how it has changed across recent decades. The flyby produced more than just eye candy, however. Juno's instruments also gathered data about Europa that could help future missions pinpoint target sites for closer investigations, namely regions that may spout watery plumes from subsurface reservoirs. Such studies could help answer the question of whether this alien moon is habitable—or even inhabited. Elsewhere this week, we have stories on the smashing success of NASA's DART mission, calibration woes for the Webb telescope, how satellites can combat climate change, and more. Enjoy!

Lee Billings, Senior Editor, Space & Physics @LeeBillings

Planetary Science Jupiter's Ocean Moon Europa Is Ready for Its Close-up Fresh data from the Juno probe's flyby of Europa could help scientists learn whether this icy moon of Jupiter is habitable—or even inhabited By Daniel Leonard

Planetary Science DART's Smashing Success Shows Humanity Can Divert Asteroids NASA confirms that its DART spacecraft nudged the asteroid Dimorphos into a new orbit By Rahul Rao,Nature magazine

Quantum Physics The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of reality By Daniel Garisto

Astronomy 'Bit of Panic': Astronomers Forced to Rethink Early JWST Findings Revised calibrations for the James Webb Space Telescope's instruments are bedevilling researchers studying the distant universe By Alexandra Witze,Nature magazine

Engineering This Black Female Engineer Broke through the Double Bind of Racism and Sexism and Directly Nurtured a Legion of STEM Leaders Yvonne Y. Clark, known as Y.Y., had a lifetime of groundbreaking achievements. In the final episode of this season's Lost Women of Science podcast, we see how Y.Y.'s more than five decades of teaching educated a new generation of mechanical engineers, who credit her with helping to change the industry By Katie Hafner,Carol Sutton Lewis,The Lost Women of Science Initiative

Engineering NASA's Saturn V Rocket, the Moon Rock Box and the Woman Who Made Them Work Properly Yvonne Y. Clark, known as Y.Y. throughout her career, had a lifetime of groundbreaking achievements as a Black female mechanical engineer. In the third episode of the third season of the Lost Women of Science podcast, we see how Y.Y.'s brilliance helped make Project Apollo a success By Katie Hafner,Carol Sutton Lewis,The Lost Women of Science Initiative

Climate Change U.S. Secretary of the Interior: Satellites Will Help Us Fight Climate Change As USGS takes over operations of a Landsat satellite, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland explains how the data gathered will help the Biden administration's climate change plans By Deb Haaland

Conservation These Technologies Help You Live Lightly on a Fragile Planet Ecologically and socially friendly "convivial technologies" help the earth and us By Anitra Nelson,Vincent Liegey

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Volume 327, Issue 4

QUOTE OF THE DAY "Europa is one of the most promising worlds in our search for habitability and life. So these missions and their detailed studies are key to shortening the gap between Europa being just a promising habitable world and having the data needed to confirm its habitability." Lucas Paganini, program scientist of the Juno mission

FROM THE ARCHIVE Decades-Old Data Unveils Plumes Spewing from Europa Archived observations from NASA's Galileo spacecraft all but confirm the Jovian moon's subsurface ocean is within reach of future life-seeking missions  By Ramin Skibba | May 2018

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