Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 14, EPSC2020-486, 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-486
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

How much Io material reaches Europa?

Fran Bagenal, Vincent Dols, Edward Nerney, Frank Crary, and Tim Cassidy
Fran Bagenal et al.
  • University of Colorado,LASP, Boulder, CO, United States of America (bagenal@colorado.edu)

The plasma interaction with Io’s atmosphere results in at least a ton per second of escaping neutrals. Most of these neutrals supply extended neutral clouds along Io's orbit  and eventually become ionized and accelerated to corotation with Jupiter, populating the Io plasma torus as well as spreading out to fill Jupiter’s vast magnetosphere. About half to two-thirds of the plasma torus ions charge-exchange with the extended neutral clouds  and leave the torus as energetic neutral atoms, passing Europa’s orbit. Energetic neutrals are also produced directly in the plasma-atmosphere interaction, escaping with sufficient speed to reach Europa’s orbit before being ionized. The iogenic ions that are accelerated to high energies in the middle magnetosphere ultimately move back inward, again crossing Europa’s orbit. We present estimates of the fluxes of these various iogenic populations and how much oxygen, sulfur and sodium might be hitting Europa.

How to cite: Bagenal, F., Dols, V., Nerney, E., Crary, F., and Cassidy, T.: How much Io material reaches Europa?, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 September–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-486, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-486, 2020