Having A Little Oxygen, The Europa Moon May Not Be Occupied By Aliens

Portrait of Europa taken by the Galileo spacecraft (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA Europa, the moon of Jupiter, is considered one of the months to live in. With the ocean of salt water, some scientists believe that Europa is a place for alien life.

To find signs of life on the moon, NASA has brought the Juno Space Telescope closer to Europa. The data recorded by Juno was researched by several scientists and the results have been published on Nature Astronomy.

Scientists are very confident in the existence of alien life in Europa because the ocean floor on the moon is in direct contact with rocks. If chemical interaction between water and rocks forms, life may be in Europa.

However, the data found by Juno dropped that hope. Published results show that hydrogen and oxygen are the main elements of Europa's atmosphere, but the amount of oxygen only reaches 12 kilograms per second.

This amount is much lower than previously thought, which is around 1,100 kilograms per second. In addition, Europa also continues to lose oxygen because the oxygen released from the lunar surface is only a small amount.

When oxygen returns to the surface, this oxygen does not enter the sea below the lunar surface. All oxygen will disappear on the surface so that undersea life is very difficult to occur.

This finding still needs to be investigated further to prove whether the oxygen in Europa's atmosphere is indeed small. It is possible that Juno's data does not represent all the oxygen in Europa's moon.

By the end of this year, NASA will again monitor Europa using the Europa Clipper spacecraft. This aircraft will cross Europa twice so that scientists can have more information about Europa.