Europa's Surface Composition by Measuring Pickup Ions: Model Calculations

Details Europa's Surface Composition by Measuring Pickup Ions: Model Calculations Europa's Surface Composition by Measuring Pickup Ions: Model Calculations

May 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007agusm.p43a..04s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2007, abstract #P43A-04

Biology

0406 Astrobiology And Extraterrestrial Materials, 2732 Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, 6221 Europa, 6297 Instruments And Techniques, 7807 Charged Particle Motion And Acceleration

Scientific paper

Using a polar orbiting spacecraft around Europa with height ~ 100 km and in situ package composed of the following instruments: 3D plasma ion composition spectrometer (3DPICS), 3D plasma electron spectrometer, hot plasma energetic particle instrument and vector magnetometer. With these on can determine Europa's surface composition in 4π steradians by measuring locally produced pickup ions. Our model calculations include Jupiter's magnetospheric interaction with Europa (see Saur et al., 1998), and a model of Europa's neutral exosphere with surface as its source term. We use measurements of Europa's surface composition from Galileo (Carlson et al., 1999) for comparison purposes. The approach is to alternate between times measuring pickup ions and times measuring plasma and magnetic field parameters along the spacecraft trajectory. By measuring the pickup ion energy, arrival direction and mass-per-charge, one can trace back in time its origin if one knows the electric field and magnetic field in 3D. In situ observations of plasma flow velocities and vector magnetic fields can be used to determine the local convective electric field (E = -VXB) along the spacecraft trajectory. Then by combining this information with models of the magnetospheric interaction with Europa one can generate 3D maps of the electric and magnetic field and compute the trajectories of the pickup ions back to their source points. The neutral exosphere model is needed to estimate production rates of pickup ions and determine if ion-neutral scattering is important. The hot plasma measurements are needed to correct for sputtering rates which can be time dependent and electron plasma observations for electron impact ionization rates. Instrument characteristics, field-of-view requirements, and modes of operation will be given. At minimum we will require the 3DPICS and vector magnetometer. Saur, J., D. F. Strobel and F. M. Neubauer, JGR, vol. 103, 19947, 1998 Carlson, R. W., R. E. Johnson and M. S. Anderson, Science, vol. 286, 97, 1999.

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