FAR from being a haven of ice and water and an ideal spot for the search for alien life, Jupiter’s moon Europa may be a corrosive hotbed of acid and peroxide. That is the conclusion of researchers who met last week to prepare for NASA’s proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, an ambitious mission to study Jupiter’s moons.
Almost all the information we have about Europa comes from the spacecraft Galileo, which completed its mission to study Jupiter and its moons close up before NASA dramatically crashed it into Jupiter last year (New Scientist, 20 September 2003, p 14). Although…
