EGU23-9404, updated on 16 May 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-9404
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Water-group pickup ions from Europa: A window into surface ice evolution

Jamey Szalay1, Frederic Allegrini2, Robert Ebert2, Fran Bagenal3, Scott Bolton2, Shahab Fatemi4, David McComas1, Angele Pontoni2, Andrew Poppe5, Yash Sarkango1, Joachim Saur6, Todd Smith7, Philip Valek2, Steven Vance8, Audrey Vorburger9, and Robert Wilson3
Jamey Szalay et al.
  • 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.