Europa Clipper Lecture Series: "The Heat Signatures of Ocean Worlds"(12/9/2025)

Описание: Alyssa Rhoden, a staff scientist and group leader at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, discusses the heat signatures of ocean worlds.

Abstract: The presence of an ocean within an icy moon will change the thermal structure of its ice shell and may enable tidal heating that can increase the moon's thermal budget. Hence, surface heat flow measurements may be viable for detection of oceans in candidate ocean worlds. Heat flow measurements may also enable characterization of ice shell thickness and the overall thermal budget of confirmed ocean worlds, which are valuable for assessing habitability. Here, we present the results of heat flow studies for Europa, Mimas, and Miranda to address questions of ice shell thickness variations and ocean detection. We will show predictive ice shell thickness maps for Europa using a sophisticated tidal model and measured surface temperature for different assumptions of Europa's internal heat budget. We then ground our predictions with recent Juno results. For Mimas and Miranda, we present measurement requirements that would enable ocean detection using surface heat flow measurements to facilitate future missions to these enigmatic moons.

This is part of the Europa Clipper Lecture Series (ECLS), hosted by the Europa Clipper mission and recordings of the monthly lectures are posted here when agreed to by the speaker. This lecture series covers a variety of topics, usually from recently published papers, relevant to understanding the habitability of Europa. Sign up for notices for upcoming talks: http://tinyurl.com/ECLS-signup
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