Under Europa's cracked ice lies an ocean with twice as much water as all of Earth's. Fall through the ice, into the dark water, and down to a seafloor nobody has ever seen.
For this trip you are indestructible. Nothing can hurt you. As you fall, we will tell you what a real body would be going through.
Scroll to fall
400 km above the ice
Jupiter fills a huge part of the sky, about 23 times as wide as the full Moon looks from Earth.
Europa orbits inside Jupiter's radiation belts. NASA's Europa Clipper, which arrives in 2030, will swoop past 49 times instead of staying, to keep its electronics alive.
A real body: No air. A real body would soak up enough radiation in a single day to be very likely fatal.
0 km down
You land on ice criss-crossed by reddish-brown cracks, some of them thousands of kilometres long.
There are hardly any craters, so this surface is young: maybe 40 to 90 million years old. Something keeps repaving it from below.
In some places the brown stains turn out to contain ordinary table salt, which probably came up from the ocean.
A real body: No air, −160 °C, and radiation pouring down. The ice is as hard as rock.
5 km down
Some patches of the surface look jumbled, like broken ice on a frozen pond.
Scientists think lakes of liquid water may lie just a few kilometres beneath them, trapped inside the ice shell itself, each holding as much water as North America's Great Lakes.
A real body: About 60 times Earth's air pressure, in ice at −130 °C.
20 km down
Nobody knows exactly how thick the ice is. Estimates run from a few kilometres to more than 30; many scientists think about 15 to 25.
As you sink, the ice warms. At the bottom it's only just frozen, and then suddenly it isn't.
A real body: About 240 times Earth's air pressure, and just below freezing.
60 km down
You're in the ocean: salty water, wrapped around the whole moon, perhaps 100 km deep. That's about ten times deeper than Earth's deepest trench.
It holds roughly twice as much water as all of Earth's oceans put together. In the late 1990s the Galileo spacecraft found the first strong clue: a magnetic signal that only a salty, electrically conducting layer could explain.
No sunlight has ever reached this water.
A real body: About 780 times Earth's air pressure, in total darkness and water just below freezing.
120 km down
You touch down on rock, perhaps 120 km below the ice.
Jupiter's gravity flexes Europa as it orbits, warming its insides. That heat may feed hot springs on this seafloor, like the deep-sea vents on Earth where whole ecosystems live without sunlight.
If there is life anywhere else in the solar system, this is one of the best places it could be.
A real body: About 1,600 times Earth's air pressure, one and a half times the bottom of Earth's deepest trench. In Europa's weak gravity, a deep ocean is gentler than ours.
500 km down
Below the water, Europa is made of rock, much like the inside of Earth or the Moon.
In fact, for all its ice, Europa is mostly rock. The ice and ocean are just a thin skin on the outside.
A real body: About 17,000 times Earth's air pressure, in rock that is probably several hundred degrees.
960 km down
Gravity measurements from the Galileo spacecraft show a dense centre: a core of iron about 1,200 km across.
Unlike Ganymede's, it doesn't seem to make a magnetic field of its own.
A real body: About 32,000 times Earth's air pressure, and perhaps 1,000 °C.
1,561 km down
You're at the centre of Europa, 1,561 km below the ice.
Far above you, sealed under the ice, is an ocean bigger than all of Earth's. One day, a spacecraft may go looking for life in it.
A real body: Nearly 50,000 times Earth's air pressure, and probably over 1,000 °C.
Through the ice, the hidden ocean and the rock beneath, to the iron heart of Europa. You made it.
An ocean. Under an ice shell probably 15 to 25 km thick lies salty water about 100 km deep, holding roughly twice as much water as all of Earth's oceans.
No sunlight has ever reached it. On the seafloor, heat from Jupiter's tides may feed hot springs like the deep-sea vents on Earth that support life.
Below the ocean is rock, and at the centre an iron core about 1,200 km across.
Nobody knows exactly. Estimates run from a few kilometres to more than 30. Many scientists think 15 to 25 km is most likely.
Possibly. It has liquid water, the right chemistry and maybe seafloor hot springs, making it one of the best places to look for life beyond Earth.
Not for long. The surface is −160 °C with no air, and Jupiter's radiation would give a lethal dose in about a day.
In the late 1990s the Galileo spacecraft detected a magnetic signal that only a salty, electrically conducting layer under the ice could explain. NASA's Europa Clipper arrives in 2030 to study it.
