 Jupiter’s smallest Galilean moon, Europa, not only has a massive global ocean, it has huge lakes beneath its icy crust, according to new research. “It’s a missing link to understanding to whether it (Europa) could support life.” 
 
 Scientists are basing their findings, in part, on what they learned from images taken by the old Galileo spacecraft, which was launched in 1989 to gather data and images from Jupiter and its moons. Some scientists thought it was a mile or two thick, but most scientists thought it was several miles thick. A thick crust would be bad news for life because it would mean the ocean could never splash up on Europa’s shores to interact with possible sources of food needed to sustain life. "One opinion in the scientific community has been, 'If the ice shell is thick, that's bad for biology — that it might mean the surface isn't communicating with the underlying ocean,' " according to Britney Schmidt, a postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics and the lead author of a new study published in the journal Nature. But neither camp can adequately explain how the chaos terrain forms, the team posits. But Curt Niebur, NASA's program scientist for the outer planets, explains that it's possible the overturning ice can transfer any potential nutrients to the water or slush below.
– The chances of life existing on Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa—and of Earthlings being able to find it—are looking a lot stronger, NASA scientists say. A vast ocean is believed to lie beneath as much as 20 miles of ice on Europa, but new research suggests that huge lakes exist a lot closer to the surface. A suspected interchange of water between the lakes and the ocean means that nutrients could be transferred from near the surface to life far below, the BBC reports. The research team examined bumps known as "chaos terrain" on Europa's surface and developed models based on the way ice moves around on Earth. If the researchers are right, "you've moved from a system that checks one of the requirements for life to a system that checks two requirements for life," an astrobiologist tells the Christian Science Monitor. The only way to confirm the findings would be to send a spacecraft to Europa to investigate. A mission is on the drawing board but NASA hasn't approved anything yet, CNN notes.