Jupiter’s moon Europa has a subsurface ocean thought to contain twice the amount of water of Earth’s oceans. But scientists had not been able to confirm if the ocean contains biologically essential chemicals for life as we know it, particularly carbon, until now.

Dr. Samantha Trumbo, a 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University, and other astronomers using data from NASA’s JWST telescope, have identified carbon dioxide in a specific, recently-resurfaced region on the icy surface of Europa called Tara Regio. Their analysis, which was published in Science, indicates that the carbon likely originated in Europa’s subsurface ocean, a discovery that signals a potentially habitable environment.

“We now think that we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa’s surface came from the ocean. That’s not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element,” said Dr. Trumbo, lead author of one of two independent papers describing the findings.

Find out more about this important discovery in the published paper, and JWST’s news release.