Word: joviane
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...knew the origin of the Jovian rings, but astronomers assumed they were either the pulverized remains of a small moon that had been destroyed by a collision or the raw material of an incipient moon that had never had the gravitational muscle to pull itself together. Last week they reached a different conclusion. New images returned by the Galileo spacecraft reveal that the fairy-dust bands are debris blasted into space when the planet's four innermost moons were struck by meteors...
...could help a community of astronauts survive. Almost lost in the excitement was news from a far more distant and far wetter world. According to the crispest images yet from the Galileo Jupiter probe, there is more reason than ever to think that beneath the icy skin of the Jovian moon Europa there lies a warm, amniotic sea in which heat, moisture and organic chemicals may have already allowed life to take hold...
Galileo has completed its original planned tour of the Jovian system and is on a two-year extended mission to study several of Jupiter's moons. Six other flybys of Europa are scheduled before the sturdy spacecraft, which left Earth almost nine years ago, at last shuts down in December 1999. On one pass, Galileo will observe Europa from an angle that will allow scientists to look for telltale volcanic plumes rising from its edge. If found, they'll indicate that the moon is warmer than it seems--and an even likelier incubator for extraterrestrial life...
...water ocean beneath a thin rind of ice on Jupiter's moon Europa. Where there's water, there's usually heat, and where there's water and heat, there could well be life. Sometime after 2000, NASA is hoping to launch a Europa probe that will orbit the Jovian moon at an altitude of 60 miles--about the same distance at which Apollo spacecraft used to orbit Earth's moon--photographing its surface and taking radar soundings to look for water beneath its crust. If the radar picks up the telltale echoes of liquid, another spacecraft would be sent...
Whether any of the moons will ever be understood fully, of course, is open to question. Before long, however, they will certainly be understood better. Galileo could be functioning until late 1999, with more than 20 passes through the Jovian system still to come. Next fall NASA plans to launch the new Cassini-Huygens spacecraft on a seven-year odyssey to Saturn. In addition to making at least 36 orbital slalom runs through five of Saturn's inner moons, the ship will fire off a probe that will puncture Titan's cloud cover, parachute to its surface and send environmental...