Europa's Surface: Up-Close Topography

This close-up composite of images captured by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s shows the crust of Jupiter's moon Europa. This picture is cropped from a larger image. These are the kind of features studied by scientists who recently modeled how moonquakes may trigger landslides on icy moons circling Jupiter and Saturn.

Visible here is a juxtaposition of features: possible fault scarps (like those found on Earth when tectonic activity breaks the crust) adjacent to smooth areas that may have been produced by landslide material spreading out.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California managed the mission for the agency. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California.