Characterizing the altitude dependence of radar reflectometry for the (near-)surface of icy worlds

Knowledge of (near-)surface properties and their spatial heterogeneity can reveal much about the processes that dominate the evolution of the top few-to-tens of meters of icy worlds. Radar reflectometry has been demonstrated to be a valuable technique for characterizing near-surface ice on Earth and Mars with mature plans for it to be applied to future observations of the Jovian icy moons, collected by the Europa Clipper and Juice missions. Both missions host nadir-pointing ice-penetrating radar instruments: the Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON) on Europa Clipper operating at center frequencies of 60 MHz and 9 MHz, with bandwidths of 10 MHz and 1 MHz, respectively, and the Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) on Juice at a single 9 MHz center frequency but bandwidths of 1 and 2.8 MHz.

Previous applications of reflectometry rested on the assumptions implicit in the Radar Statistical Reconnaissance (RSR) technique, which has been regularly used to characterize bulk near-surface properties (e.g., porosity) and surface roughness, each predominantly dependent on the coherent and incoherent components of the total surface return, respectively. However, these previous applications of RSR utilized observations collected at near constant altitude. Europa Clipper and Juice will both perform flybys of their targets of interest with altitude that rapidly changes across the observation window. Thus, an understanding of how altitude (convolved with changes in the surface geology) can affect the balance between observed coherent and incoherent backscattered energy is necessary to confidently apply RSR on Europa and Ganymede.

Here, we simulate the radar surface echo from synthetic Europa-like terrains, using a version of the multilayer Stratton-Chu coherent simulator that computes the scattering contributions from every frequency component within the bandwidth of the emitted chirp. We then apply RSR to deconvolve the total simulated surface power into its coherent and incoherent components. We assess the coherent content of the total power to changes in altitude, by comparing the coherent power derived from simulated surface echoes at the REASON/RIME shared center frequency (9 MHz) but different bandwidths (1 vs. 2.8 MHz). Coherent and incoherent geometric power falls off at different rates with altitude. Thus, the coherent content of the total return at a particular altitude over the target of interest could affect our ability to invert for near-surface properties. Note in particular that different terrain types (e.g., chaos terrain versus ridged plains on Europa) may be better observed at different altitudes from the perspective of reflectometry. In addition, our results provide valuable insight into targets and altitudes suitable for cross calibrating RIME and REASON [9/1 MHz] for comparative radar studies across the Jovian icy moons.