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What Has NASA Found? US Space Agency to Make Major Announcement

Tuesday, April 11, 2017 19:25
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(Before It's News)

by Ancient Code

 

NASA has called for ANOTHER press conference to discuss another major discovery. The conference will be attended by several members of the Cassini team, which raises speculation among many that the announcement could be a revelation about Jupiter’s sixth closest moon Europa—the place where astronomers believe its most likely we’ll find alien life.

According to reports from the space Agency, the press conference scheduled at 14:00 ET (19:00 GMT) on Thursday will ‘discuss new results about ocean worlds.’

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Has NASA found traces of life in our Solar System?

According to the Space Agency, the press briefing will discuss findings from both the agency’s Cassini spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope.

In a statement on their website, NASA said that: “These new discoveries will help inform future ocean world exploration – including NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission planned for launch in the 2020s – and the broader search for life beyond Earth.”

The press conference will be held at NASA’s James Webb Auditorium in Washington and will be broadcasted live on NASA Television and the agency’s website, which will allow experts from all over the country to participate in the briefing.

It is believed that Jim Green, director of NASA’s Division of Planetary Sciences will attend the conference together with leading astrobiologists, scientists and astronomers associated with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Interestingly, the conference will be attended by several members of the Cassini team, which raises speculation among many that the announcement could be a revelation about Jupiter’s sixth closest moon Europa, ahead of the 2020 Europa Clipper mission, or Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn.

Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of the most interesting places in the solar system when it comes to alien life. As noted by Futurism, ever since the Voyager probes winged their way galaxy-ward, there’s been a great deal of speculation that Jupiter’s second moon, Europa, might harbor a warm, liquid ocean beneath its piebald shell of red-and-white ice; recent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope even suggest some of that water is escaping into space, in the form of geysers—akin to what we see on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

Europa is located some 500 million miles from the sun and has an ocean beneath its surface which many astronomers believe may be home to alien life.

Furthermore, Europa has more liquid water than we have on Earth.

Also, NASA’s new announcement could also be related to the faint plumes of water that were spotted escaping the moon in 2012.

“Observations of Europa have provided us with tantalizing clues over the last two decades, and the time has come to seek answers to one of humanity’s most profound questions,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

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Europa, the mysterious moon of Jupiter. Is there alien life lurking beneath all of that ice? (Credit: NASA)

“By far the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa,” lead author Lorenz Roth of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said when the plumes were first spotted.

“If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean we are confident exists under Europa’s crust, then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa’s potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice. And that is tremendously exciting.”

Reference:NASA to Reveal New Discoveries in News Conference on Oceans Beyond Earth

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