Mondo Knows Facts
Europa may hold twice as much water as all Earth oceans combined
A deep saltwater ocean sits concealed beneath the icy crust of Jupiter moon
Jupiter's icy moon Europa is covered by a smooth global shell of ice estimated to be 15 to 25 kilometres thick. Beneath this frozen crust sits a warm, global liquid water ocean up to 100 kilometres deep, held in liquid form by gravitational tidal flexing from giant Jupiter.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: europa, ocean, jupiter
Europa may hold twice as much water as all Earth oceans combined: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- A deep saltwater ocean sits concealed beneath the icy crust of Jupiter moon. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.
