Road Trip this week on planetary radio.

Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our

solar system and beyond.

My colleagues called it the Rocket Road Trip.

The Rocket is the gigantic space launch system and we'll talk about

how it is coming together with the Society's digital editor Jason Davis.

Bill Nye will speak to us from the first day of the International Astronautical Congress in

Guadalajara, Mexico, and Bruce Betts will pull down the night sky for your easy viewing

enjoyment.

As I began work on this week's show, NASA was sharing news easy viewing

news from Jupiter's moon Europa. Before we hear about it from Emily

Lochuwala, here's lead author William Sparks,

an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute,

making the big announcement in a September 26 telephone briefing.

Today we are presenting new Hubble evidence for water vapor plumes being expelled from the ice

surface of Europa. Europa is the second closest Galileo satellite to Jupiter, a classical icy world and a truly compelling

astrobiological target in the solar system.

Observations indicate a global saline liquid water ocean engulfs the moon at the present time hidden under miles of ice.

If there are plumes emerging from Europa, it is significant because it means we may be able to explore that ocean for organic chemicals or even signs of life without having to drill through unknown miles of ice. science of

this,

this time,

the lead author of this soon to be published paper he's with the Space Telescope Science Institute. This is pretty big news, isn't it?

...