Elly Catfox 
nya
2022 – On June 9th, the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer is scheduled to be launched. The mission will study three of Jupiter’s Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, all of which are thought to have significant bodies of liquid water beneath their surfaces, making them potentially habitable environments.
Personally, I’m very excited for Ganymede. We almost certainly won’t find any actual life, even if it abounds there, because it will likely be hundreds of kilometers below the surface. But, we may find important data and features that will help us in our search in the future.
When thinking of places in our solar system that potentially host extraterrestrial life, most people have tacked Ganymede on as an afterthought, due to its very inhospitable surface. As of yet, however, there are many reasons to believe in the possibility at this time, and interest in recent years has started to warm.
The relative lack of change that Ganymede has had over the past many millions, if not billions of years, may have had a protective effect on any life inhabiting Ganymede’s subsurface oceans.
Curiously, Ganymede has not only a magnetosphere, but also one shockingly similar to ours in some key ways. Most notably, we can tell from some of the wavering ripples and “fuzz” in Ganymede’s magnetosphere that there are salts in its oceans, which means that there may be more potential for organic chemistry and complexity on Ganymede than previously thought.
There might be vast ecosystems of wildly different Ganymedian “fish” separated between different ice shelves and located in different, isolated oceans below the surface.
I for one, am excited to learn more about all of Jupiter’s moons in the coming years. It will take until 2029 before the Icy Moons Explorer reaches Jupiter, but I’ll be patient haha.
Personally, I’m very excited for Ganymede. We almost certainly won’t find any actual life, even if it abounds there, because it will likely be hundreds of kilometers below the surface. But, we may find important data and features that will help us in our search in the future.
When thinking of places in our solar system that potentially host extraterrestrial life, most people have tacked Ganymede on as an afterthought, due to its very inhospitable surface. As of yet, however, there are many reasons to believe in the possibility at this time, and interest in recent years has started to warm.
The relative lack of change that Ganymede has had over the past many millions, if not billions of years, may have had a protective effect on any life inhabiting Ganymede’s subsurface oceans.
Curiously, Ganymede has not only a magnetosphere, but also one shockingly similar to ours in some key ways. Most notably, we can tell from some of the wavering ripples and “fuzz” in Ganymede’s magnetosphere that there are salts in its oceans, which means that there may be more potential for organic chemistry and complexity on Ganymede than previously thought.
There might be vast ecosystems of wildly different Ganymedian “fish” separated between different ice shelves and located in different, isolated oceans below the surface.
I for one, am excited to learn more about all of Jupiter’s moons in the coming years. It will take until 2029 before the Icy Moons Explorer reaches Jupiter, but I’ll be patient haha.
