Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have led an investigation into what appears to be a body of water equal to the volume of the Great Lakes inside the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa. It had been feared that cut off from the surface, there would be less chance of life evolving in these waters but now it appears the subsurface lake is covered by floating ice shelves that periodically collapse, recombining nutrients and energy and thus improving the chance for some life forms to exist below the surface. A mission to penetrate the crust of Europa is currently being studied by NASA.
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