With $1.8M, HIGP researchers prepare to search Jupiter’s icy moon for signs of life
Europa. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute
Beneath a miles-thick icy crust, Jupiter’s moon Europa likely has a saltwater ocean that may be one of the best places to look for life beyond Earth. Researchers in the Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa were awarded $1.8 million from NASA to predict where they may have the best chance of accessing the liquid ocean and possibly finding life.
On Europa, liquid from the ocean may be exposed at the surface, or actively escape into space through plumes of vapor and ice particles. Such activity could also bring with it samples of microbial life that may inhabit the ocean. Sarah Fagents, researcher in HIGP at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), is leading the new effort to predict where the Europa Clipper, the mission to Europa that NASA launched on October 14, 2024, is most likely to find current-day activity, liquid water, and maybe even signs of life.
“This precursor work will provide critical context to enable more efficient analysis of Clipper data by the science community and will help generate discoveries and new questions that will feed into the planning of mission observations,” said Fagents. “This will maximize the science return during the lifetime of the Europa Clipper, which is limited due to the intense radiation it will experience around this moon.”
After traversing the solar system for nearly six years, Europa Clipper will reach Jupiter, orbit the planet, and conduct nearly 50 close flybys of Europa. In preparation for Europa Clipper’s arrival to the outer solar system, NASA funded projects to enhance and guide the data to be collected. Fagents’ three-year project includes HIGP researchers Shuai Li, Gwendolyn Brouwer, and Lauren Schurmeier; and collaborators from four other institutions (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the University of Texas at Austin, and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab).
Clues from chaos
The team’s research will focus on what is referred to as Europa’s chaos terrains. These are highly fractured and disrupted areas of the moon’s surface where blocks of ice appear to have broken off, drifted and refrozen to the surface. Previous research has indicated that liquid water either rises directly from the ocean to the subsurface or forms by melting of salty ice at shallow depths, creating massive lakes inside the moon’s frozen crust. Over time, the ice directly above these lakes collapses, splintering into floating geometric fragments that rotate, raft and resettle into all kinds of chaotic configurations.
Fagents’ project has several objectives to help guide the future collection of data on the Europa Clipper mission. The team will develop computer models to constrain the structure of the ice shell and whether it is brittle or ductile; better understand how the icy shell might respond and deform due to heat from below; and, together with laboratory experiments on salty ice mixtures, assess the role of liquid water in forming chaos terrain. The researchers will also employ machine learning methods to compare Europa Clipper and earlier spacecraft data to determine whether this terrain is actively forming today.
“With the upcoming work, we will assess the feasibility of different chaos formation models, determine the potential for exposure of interior and/or ocean materials at the surface, develop techniques for efficient analysis of Clipper data, and evaluate where best to look for signs of habitability exposed at the surface,” said Fagents. “I’m excited to see what’s ahead.”
Read also on UH News.