The discovery complicates one of the most attractive ideas in planetary exploration: that material from Europa’s buried ocean might rise through fractures and collect in shallow pockets just beneath the surface. Those reservoirs would give spacecraft a much easier way to investigate the ocean without drilling through miles of ice.

Research led by Rutgers scientist Lujendra Ojha, however, indicates that the journey upward may be nearly impossible under realistic conditions. Water rushing through the ice would lose heat so quickly that the fractures could become clogged with ice before much liquid traveled toward the surface.