Science and Exploration

James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Carbon on Europa

By Craig Bamford

SpaceRef

October 4, 2023

Filed under Astrobiology, Europa, James Webb Space Telescope, NASA

James Webb Space Telescope Discovers Carbon on Europa — Model of Europa’s subsurface ocean.

Image credit: Nature Communications; Samuel Howell & Robert Pappalardo CC BY 4.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/]

The search for extraterrestrial life, and planetary bodies that could potentially support it, has been a key part of human space exploration since its earliest days. One of the most intensely-speculated-about possibilities in that search is Jupiter’s moon of Europa and its subsurface sea of water.

Now, humanity’s most powerful space-based telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has found intriguing new signs of the existence of carbon—the foundation of life as we know it—on Europa.

Craig Bamford

Craig is a technology journalist with a strong focus on space-related startups, business, and pop culture. He started working in science & technology media in 2016, and began writing about the Canadian space sector in 2017 for SpaceQ. He is a graduate of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, where he specialized in international conflict analysis and conflict resolution. He lives in Toronto.