# Europa

*In the Solar System*

The smallest of Jupiter's four large moons, a little smaller than ours, with one of the smoothest solid surfaces in the Solar System: a shell of water ice some fifteen to twenty-five kilometres thick, crossed by long dark cracks and hardly cratered, over a salt-water ocean that probably holds about twice the water of all the Earth's seas. Jupiter flexes it once every three and a half days, and the heat of that flexing is what keeps the ocean liquid. Europa Clipper, launched in 2024, is due there in 2030. This map places it as Jupiter's position plus one fitted loop of its orbit, and the error of that fit is printed below rather than hidden in the figures above it.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Radius | 1,561 km |
| Around the equator | 9,807 km |
| From the Sun | 794,598,256 km (+353,839 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 869,386,811 km (-1,484,404 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 48 min |
| Goes round | Jupiter |
| Placed to within | 15,149 km |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-10-09, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=europa
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/europa/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt