The story of oceans is the story of life. Life as we know it requires three ingredients: energy, organic molecules, and liquid water. Our search for life beyond Earth is, in part, a search for planets and moons that harbor substantial liquid water.
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Callisto’s cratered surface lies at the top of an ice layer estimated to be about 124 miles (200 km) thick. An ocean, which is thought to be at least 6 miles (10 km) deep, could be directly beneath the ice.
Scientists strongly suspect that a salty, subsurface ocean lies beneath Europa's icy crust. Tidal heating from Jupiter, maintains this ocean's liquid state and could also create melted pockets.
With towering mountains of water ice, flowing glaciers of nitrogen, methane ice, Pluto is a surprisingly active world. Mysterious fault lines, suggest that Pluto has a hidden subsurface ocean.
Asteroids and comets are debris left over from the formation of our solar system, and are rich in water. These small bodies are time capsules that contain tantalizing clues about what our solar system was like 4.5 billion years ago.
Most asteroids orbit the Sun between the planets Mars and Jupiter, but many swing nearer to Earth. Comets are found in the outer reaches of our solar system, either in the Kuiper Belt just beyond the orbit of Neptune.
Billions of years ago, Venus may have been our solar system’s first ocean world. Venus lacks a strong global magnetic field, which on Earth, helps to protect our atmosphere. A runaway greenhouse effect raised temperatures enough to boil off the water, which escaped into space due to the solar wind.
Water vapor has been discovered on a planet roughly the size of Neptune; the smallest exoplanet known to have water. HAT-P-11b is 120 light years away in the constellation Cygnus and sits close to its star in a five-day orbit.
Kepler-22b is the first planet in a confirmed orbit in a star's habitable zone – the region around a star where liquid water could persist on its surface. Kepler-22b is a “super-Earth,” about 2.4 times Earth’s size. Scientists do not yet know if the planet has a rocky, gaseous, or liquid composition.
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