Europa floats in front of Jupiter.
The hunt for extraterrestrial life just grew a little hotter.
On Monday, during his "State of NASA" speech, administrator Charles Bolden announced that NASA will be selecting projects to accompany a probe to Jupiter's moon Europa.
Floating in space about 390 million miles from earth, Europa is a remote ice ball that harbors a massive ocean underneath its surface.
So massive, in fact, that scientists suspect Europa could have as much as two to three times more liquid water than Earth!
Judging from the abundance of life thriving in Earth's oceans: Where there's liquid water, there's the potential for life.
Not only that, Europa is absolutely gorgeous:
Europa is about 1,900 miles in diameter - slightly smaller than our moon. The brown veins that give the moon it's iconic beauty are still a mystery, but the leading theory is that they show where Europa's crust cracked open letting warmer, dirtier water seep through and then freeze.
Jupiter's strong gravitational tug on the tiny moon generates tidal forces that stretch the entire surface - similar to how the Moon's gravity tugs the water in Earth's oceans, creating tides. The stretching then cracks the crust letting water deeper beneath the surface to seap through.
But that's not the only impact the gas giant has on its moon. As NASA astrobiologist Kevin Hand explains in a video about Europa:
The reason that Europa has liquid water is because it's orbiting Jupiter and the tidal tug and pull causes Europa to flex up and down and all that tidal energy turns into friction and heat that helps maintain this liquid water ocean beneath and icy shell.

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