Europlanet Science Congress 2021
Virtual meeting
13 – 24 September 2021
Europlanet Science Congress 2021
Virtual meeting
13 September – 24 September 2021
EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 15, EPSC2021-714, 2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2021-714
Europlanet Science Congress 2021
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Thermal conductivity measurements of frozen salt solutions in Jovian moons to support future JUICE mission.

Cristóbal González Díaz1, Guillermo M. Muñoz Caro1, Héctor Carrascosa de Lucas1, Sofía Aparicio Secanellas2, Margarita González Hernández2, José J. Anaya Velayos2, Guillermo Anaya Catalán2, Olga Prieto-Ballesteros1,3, Victoria Muñoz-Iglesias1,3, Oscar Ercilla Herrero1, Rosario Lorente4, Nicolas Altobelli4, and Olivier Witasse5
Cristóbal González Díaz et al.
  • 1Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, INTA-CSIC), Astrophysics, Spain (cgonzalez@cab.inta-csic.es)
  • 2Institute for Physical and Information Technologies “Leonardo Torres Quevedo”, ITEFI (CSIC), Spain
  • 3MALTA-Consolider Team, Spain
  • 4European Space Agency (ESA), ESAC, Madrid, Spain
  • 5European Space Agency (ESA), European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Noordwijk, Netherlands

The upcoming JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) (ESA) and Europa Clipper (NASA) missions will perform detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and three of its largest moons (Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa).

A series of experiments was performed to measure the thermal conductivity and calorimetry of macroscopic frozen salt solutions of particular interest in Jovian icy moons. The following salts were investigated: Na-chloride (NaCl), Mg-sulphate (MgSO4), sodium sulphate (Na2SO4), and Magnesium chloride (MgCl2). Measurements were performed at atmospheric pressure and temperatures from 0 to -70ºC in a climatic chamber. Temperature and thermal conductivity were measured during the course of the experiments. A small sample of the liquid salt-water solution was set aside for the calorimetry measurements. A side effect of the measurements is that they served to spot phase changes in the ice mixtures with high sensitivity. An important result is that, the phase changes observed in the standard calorimetric tests, could be monitored in situ with high sensitivity in the thermal conductivity measurements. Indeed, when a phase change occurs, a large peak appeared in the thermal conductivity values as the result of the natural heat release that accompanied the phase change. 

How to cite: González Díaz, C., Muñoz Caro, G. M., Carrascosa de Lucas, H., Aparicio Secanellas, S., González Hernández, M., Anaya Velayos, J. J., Anaya Catalán, G., Prieto-Ballesteros, O., Muñoz-Iglesias, V., Ercilla Herrero, O., Lorente, R., Altobelli, N., and Witasse, O.: Thermal conductivity measurements of frozen salt solutions in Jovian moons to support future JUICE mission., Europlanet Science Congress 2021, online, 13–24 Sep 2021, EPSC2021-714, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2021-714, 2021.