Juno Microwave Radiometer Observations of Europa’s Subsurface Ice Shell
- 1Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, United States of America (scott.bolton@swri.org)
- 2California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA USA
- 3et Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
- 4Observatoire de Paris, France
- 5Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
- 6Planetary Science Institute, USA
- 7Max Plank Institute for Solar System Research, Germany
On 29 Sep 2022, Juno had a close flyby of Jupiter’s moon Europa, flying within 500 km of the surface. During the flyby, Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) observed Europa, obtaining several swaths across Europa using Juno’s spin to map Europa’s subsurface ice shell at six frequencies ranging from 600 MHz to 22 GHz. The ice transparency at microwave frequencies is dependent on purity; assuming pure ice, the observations probe depths ranging from meters to kilometers. The MWR observations represent the first resolved interrogation of Europa’s subsurface ice shell revealing new constraints on porosity, fracturing, differences in terrain type and possibly the thickness of the conductive ice shell. These unprecedented measurements on Europa and Ganymede will provide new insights into the comparative nature of the surfaces and interiors of the Jovian satellites.
How to cite: Bolton, S., Zhang, Z., Brown, S., Bonnefoy, L., Leonard, E., Levin, S., Lunine, J., Misra, S., Hartogh, P., Siegler, M., Stevenson, D., and Trumbo, S.: Juno Microwave Radiometer Observations of Europa’s Subsurface Ice Shell , EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-7806, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7806, 2023.
