As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

On Oct. 14, NASA’s Europa Clipper objective released from Kennedy Space Center in Florida towards among Jupiter’s biggest moons. The launch was excitedly prepared for by researchers worldwide, in part due to the fact that Europa, with its plumes of liquid water and icy crust, is believed to be among the very best locations in the planetary system to look for life beyond Earth

Europa isn’t Jupiter’s only moon– far from it. Formally, Jupiter has 95 moons acknowledged by the International Astronomical Union. The concern of how lots of natural satellites the world really has is a bit more complex.

Jupiter’s 4 best-known moons are the Galilean moons, found by Galileo Galilei in 1610. They are called Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa, after figures in Greek folklore related to the god Zeus. (“Jupiter” is the ancient Roman name for Zeus.)These moons are huge– each is approximately the size of Earth’s moon or bigger, and together, they comprise around 99.97 % of the mass of all the product orbiting the gas giant. Due to their size and the existence of geologic procedures like volcanism, these moons produce and keep their own thin environments.

Related: NASA exposes’glass-smooth lake of cooling lava’ on surface area of Jupiter’s moon Io

Each of Jupiter’s other 91 main moons has a size higher than 0.6 mile (1 kilometer)– however just 57 have names, and simply 8 have routine, almost round orbits. They are “generally too small to hold onto any [atmospheric] vapor,” Statia Cookan astronomer at New York University, informed Live Science in an e-mail.

In addition to Jupiter’s qualified moons, countless smaller sized “moonlets” — the majority of which are recorded asteroids and portions of particles– circle the world.

Jupiter isn’t the only world in the planetary system with myriad moons. For years, it has actually contended with its nearby gas giant Saturn over which has the most natural satellites.

The number of moons does Saturn have?

Saturn’s 8 biggest moons were found in between 1671 and 1848 by numerous astronomers. For much of the 20th century, the moon counts for Jupiter and Saturn stayed reasonably steady at 12 and 8, respectively. In 1979, NASA’s Voyager probes discovered 2 formerly unidentified Jovian moons and included 3 moons to Saturn’s collection.

These discoveries hinted that both worlds may have more in their orbits, beginning more than 40 years of moon searching. In between 2018 and 2023the leader flip-flopped numerous times. In the meantime, however, Saturn holds the title for the most moons, with a massive 146

Saturn’s most significant moon without a doubt is Titan, with practically two times the mass of Earth’s moon. “Titan is really special — it has clouds and rain, rivers and lakes — but made of hydrocarbons like methane instead of water,” Cook stated. Presently, it’s one of the very best prospects for extraterrestrial life in the planetary system, together with Europa.

Future research study will inform whether moons like Titan and Europa harbor the required components for life. Europa Clipper will start examining its moon in 2030, and NASA’s Dragonfly probe is arranged to introduce in 2028 and reach Titan in 2034. They represent “an exciting step forward in our mission to investigate whether the conditions for life could exist beyond Earth, right here in our own solar system,” Cook stated.

Joanna Thompson is a science reporter and runner based in New York. She holds a B.S. in Zoology and a B.A. in Creative Writing from North Carolina State University, along with a Master’s in Science Journalism from NYU’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. Discover more of her operate in Scientific American, The Daily Beast, Atlas Obscura or Audubon Magazine.

A lot of Popular

Learn more