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The Closer We Look, the Stranger Europa Gets

NASA releases the largest, clearest image of Jupiter's watery moon yet.

This image actually dates back to the 1990s, when NASA's Galileo spaceprobe became the first craft to orbit Jupiter. Galileo spent eight years collecting data on the planet and its moons and, save for the ​New Horizons flyby in 2007, we haven't been back.

Above is the highest resolution image capturing the largest expanse of surface area available. It was released previously as a lower-resolution mosaic composite.

"Images taken through near-infrared, green and violet filters have been combined to produce this view," a ​NASA image-of-the-day announcement explains. "The images have been corrected for light scattered outside of the image, to provide a color correction that is calibrated by wavelength. Gaps in the images have been filled with simulated color based on the color of nearby surface areas with similar terrain types."

It's thought that the white and blue regions are made up of relatively pure water-ice. The reddish and brownish stripes would be some other material, so far undetermined. The polar regions of the moon, to the right and left, are indeed bluer than the central equatorial zones, possibly the result of differing ice-grain sizes.

The moon's slight oxygen atmosphere and theorized subsurface water oceans make it one of the solar system's hottest destinations. Both the European Space Agency and NASA are currently studying exploration missions, with the earliest planned launch being 2022. Currently, a mission concept known as the ​Europa Clipper is the US favorite; it wouldn't land, but would still be able to penetrate beneath the icy surface with radar, which is a pretty good start to answering key questions about the possibilities for Europan life.