Water-group pickup ions from Europa: A window into surface ice evolution
- 1Princeton University, Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton, United States of America (jszalay@princeton.edu)
- 2Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas, USA
- 3Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- 4Department of Physics, University of Umeå, Umeå, Sweden
- 5Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley, 7 Gauss Way, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- 6Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
- 7The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Maryland, USA
- 8Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
- 9Physikalisches Institut, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Water-group gas continuously escapes from Jupiter’s icy moon Europa in both charged and neutral states. The neutral species form co-orbiting populations of particles, or neutral toroidal clouds, eventually becoming ionized to be incorporated into the Jovian plasma environment. In September 2022, Juno performed a close flyby at ~350 km, an altitude less than the satellite’s radius, allowing it to make direct observations of water-group pickup-ions originating from the moon’s surface. These observations, along with more remote measurements by Juno of Europa-genic water-group pickup ions, provide critical constraints on the evolution and loss processes of Europa’s icy surface. We will present direct observations of water-group pickup-ions from Europa in the context of understanding the breakdown and evolution of Europa’s surface ice.
How to cite: Szalay, J., Allegrini, F., Ebert, R., Bagenal, F., Bolton, S., Fatemi, S., McComas, D., Pontoni, A., Poppe, A., Sarkango, Y., Saur, J., Smith, T., Valek, P., Vance, S., Vorburger, A., and Wilson, R.: Water-group pickup ions from Europa: A window into surface ice evolution, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-9404, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-9404, 2023.