Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007agufm.p51e..01a&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #P51E-01
Physics
1729 Planetology, 6035 Orbital And Rotational Dynamics, 6040 Origin And Evolution, 6060 Radiation And Chemistry, 6221 Europa
Scientific paper
Twenty-four years ago, a Nature paper announced the results of study of the Voyager images of the Jovian moon Europa, in which linear fracture-like markings were projected to be evidence of liquid water and active resurfacing [Nature 301, 225 - 226 (20 January 1983)]. This paper was a post-Voyager study that pre-dated the Galileo findings by two decades. Years of modeling had gone into the effort to understand the potential thermal history of the icy moons of Jupiter. Much of the theoretical work concluded that the bodies would have been frozen solid for billions of years, but there was enough work to suggest further in situ investigation was warranted. Behind the scenes was a concerted effort to make the Galilean satellites the focus of unmanned exploration for NASA's planetary science program. The historic significance of this journey of exploration, the manner in which it unfolded, is of relevance to a whole new generation of investigators. In this talk we will present highlights of the entire period of discovery, from the commensurate orbital motions first observed by Galileo himself [1609], that would prove critical to understanding the evolution of Europa; the theoretical work on motions of the celestial bodies by Laplace [1805] that laid the ground work for understanding the resonances; Jeans [1925] speculations about the existence of the atmospheres of the Galilean satellites in his Theory of Gases; to the ground-breaking discovery by Kuiper of the spectral signature of ice on Europa ; the work by Urey [1952] making the cosmochemical arguments about the significance of water ice in the outer solar system; efforts to understand, from photometry and spectrometry, whether surface impurities were endogenic or exogenic in origin; and the work of Johnson and colleagues laying the groundwork for the understanding of the significance of sputtering in the solar system [Johnson, et al., 1982]. We will present highlights of the exploration of the Jupiter system with spacecraft in the 1970's and '80's; and close with the discoveries of the Galileo mission as they unfolded.
Alexander Claudia J.
Consolmagno Guy
Greeley Ronald
Morrison Douglas
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