# @nasaartemis on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/-WpXVtGh7A
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/15347278-nasaartemis-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/7aab288413.jpg
- **Posted:** 2015-11-21T16:38:12.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NASA Artemis (@nasaartemis) — https://gondola.cc/nasaartemis

## Caption

Did you know that NASA's Space Launch System (#SLS) rocket has capabilities well beyond the red planet? NASA's is planning a flyby mission to Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon #Europa in the early- to mid-2020s. Flying SLS instead of currently available rockets would slash the probe's journey to the #Jupiter system from about eight years to less than three years. 
Let's learn a little more about Jupiter's frozen moon Europa. Glacial cracks and ridges scar its frigid white plains, carving paths across an icy shell that conceals a deep ocean of liquid water. Closer inspection of the moon's fractured #topography reveals highly disrupted areas, called chaos terrains, where blocks of ice appear to have broken off, drifted and refrozen to the surface. Searching for an explanation of how these features formed, researchers studying images of Europa taken by NASA's Galileo #spacecraft have come up with an answer. As plumes of warm ocean water rise to the subsurface, massive lakes develop inside the moon's crust—some larger than North America's Great Lakes combined. Over time, the ice directly above these lakes collapses, splintering into floating geometric fragments that rotate, raft and resettle into all kinds of chaotic configurations.

Happy #spaceSaturday everybody! 
Credit: NASA 
#NASA #deepspace #moons #planets

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 6,772
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- **Comments:** 37

## Tags

topography, jupiter, europa, deepspace, nasa, planets, spacesaturday, moons, spacecraft, sls

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