( CNN ) -- A moon circling Jupiter has sent up a small flare . It may be telling astronomers that life could be supported there , and it may offer a way of finding out . The scientists have recognized a puff of water vapor sprouting 125 miles high above Europa in a special image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope , NASA said Thursday . `` We pushed Hubble to its limits to see this very faint emission , '' said Joachim Saur , the telescope 's lead investigator on the project . They 're not quite sure yet , but Saur , a professor at the University of Cologne in Germany , believes that a geyser on Europa 's south pole blustered the vapor up from a water source under the moon 's surface . Aquatic life . Many scientists feel certain that a deep ocean lies beneath the icy , miles-thick shell that covers the moon , the American Geophysical Union said . The whole celestial body looks like a white , scratchy ball of ice . Europa , which is too far away from the sun to enjoy the warmth of its golden rays , has surface temperatures as low as -328 degrees Fahrenheit , the AGU said . It 's hardly a temperature anything living could survive at . But the moon is probably heated from within . Friction caused by Jupiter 's gravitational pull on its core keeps the internal ocean from freezing , scientists believe . Its water might have the right chemistry to sustain some very basic aquatic life . And this newly recognized vapor trail may offer an easier way of finding that out , astronomer Lorenz Roth told NASA . He analyzed the data Hubble collected . `` If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean we are confident exists under Europa 's crust , then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa 's potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice . And that is tremendously exciting . '' A cheaper flight . Instead of having to land there with heavy borer rigs loaded onto a large , expensive spacecraft to collect a water sample , a probe could now just fly into the vapor , suck some of it in and analyze it . Money is important , when it comes to studying Europa . Most of what astronomers know about it comes from data picked up by the Galileo mission to Jupiter , which ended in 2003 and was plagued with funding blackouts , the AGU said . NASA 's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been trying to come up with lower-budget experiments to make funding for a mission more likely , according to the AGU . They would involve an orbiter to observe the surface long-term and a spacecraft that would fly there to take radar images of what 's underneath the ice . Now , there may be another , even more enticing and equally thrifty experiment to add to the list . Need more pics . But before all that can happen , Hubble needs to snap few more images of the plumes to confirm the discovery . And even then , it may take Saur and his colleagues a while to feel comfortable with their analysis of the spectrographic images that discern light waves from Europa . The vapor is not visible to the naked eye . Hubble was able to detect it only because electrons crashed into it , converting it into hydrogen and oxygen molecules . Thursday 's announcement was based on images recorded in December of last year , NASA said . It took that long to be reasonably sure that the clouds were n't caused by something else , like charged particles flying there through Jupiter 's magnetic field or a meteor crashing down . Dolphins ? Nah . If a mission to Europa gets launched , do n't expect it to turn up a dolphin . Because of the extreme conditions in that ocean -- if it exists -- scientists would probably find -- if anything -- the kind of microbes that live under Earth 's arctic caps or near undersea volcanoes , the AGU said . This is n't the first time scientists have found water vapor coming from another planet 's moon . A NASA orbiter has detected similar spouts on one of Saturn 's moons , Enceladus , NASA said . But this is a sensational find , if it is confirmed . It may represent the closest place to Earth where scientists could find still-existing life outside of our planet .
Scientists strongly believe there is an ocean deep under the ice surface of Europa . The Hubble Space Observatory captured a spectrographic image showing water vapor . Astronomers believe it came from a geyser close to the hidden ocean . The vapor could make it possible for a space probe to scan the water for signs of life .