(CNN) Although Jupiter's moon Europa looks alien to us, it contains an ingredient familiar to us: sodium chloride, otherwise known as good ol' table salt.

It's also a main component of sea salt. Europa is one of the intriguing water worlds in our solar system and potentially a place where life could exist in a subsurface ocean. The discovery of sodium chloride means Europa's ocean could look more like those on Earth and even possibly include salt. Now, astronomers may have to think differently about the composition of Europa's ocean.

Planetary scientists did a visible-light spectral analysis of the yellow spots on Europa to find the salt. A study published Wednesday in Science Advances sheds light on the discovery.

Previously, NASA's Voyager and Galileo spacecraft performed flybys of Europa, which led scientists to discover that the moon has a salty liquid water ocean beneath an icy shell. An infrared spectrometer aboard Galileo studied the shell and detected water ice and magnesium sulfate salts, which are similar to Epsom salts. It was believed that the shell was similar in composition to the same ingredients that made up the ocean.

"People have traditionally assumed that all of the interesting spectroscopy is in the infrared on planetary surfaces, because that's where most of the molecules that scientists are looking for have their fundamental features," said Mike Brown, study co-author and the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, in a statement.

Read More