Researchers in the United States and Europe have found the icy moon produces less oxygen than original estimates. In the past, astronomers thought that the liquid ocean of the moon could produce oxygen and hydrogen via a process triggered by radiation breaking up the icy surface, but the researchers of this new study say that there might only be around 12 kilograms of oxygen being produced per second at the surface – a far cry from the 1,100 kilograms that was once thought.

This new detail comes from Juno flyby data from September 2022 recently analysed, using the Jovian Auroral Distribution Experiment located on Juno, the authors extracted the abundance of various pickup ions, which are charged particles generated by the breakup of atmospheric neutrals when they collide with energetic radiation or other particles.

The 12 kilos of oxygen per second is at the lower end of the expectations inferred from previous models.