Galilean Satellite Cartography at 400 Years: A Long Way There, A Long Way to Go

Mathematics – Logic

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[5400] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets, [6218] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Jovian Satellites, [6219] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Io, [6221] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Europa

Scientific paper

Mapping of Galileo’s Medician moons proceeded very slowly for 366 years. Large scale features such as polar/equatorial deposits and Galileo Regio were likely seen telescopically, as well as, prophetically, odd features such as “canal-like lines” on Ganymede. Beginning 1979, progress came in two bursts: Voyager’s brief visits provided coarse global maps and partial hemispheric maps at resolutions ranging from 0.75 to 2 kilometers in resolution. The second burst came during the Galileo orbiter mission (1996 to 2003), which provided a significant bounty of localized very high resolution imaging. Galileo’s original mission included plans to remap the Voyager areas and fill gaps in mapping coverage at resolutions of several hundred meters. Galileo’s communication failure prevented this and for Ganymede and Callisto leaves us with the original Voyager maps (plus high resolution data). The Europa map is dominated by Galileo imaging but resolution is highly variable from 200 meters to 4 km. Longitudes near 330°W are covered by synoptic images at resolutions near 10 km, leaving a gap in control. Generating control networks for these 3 satellites from such data is difficult and have relatively high residuals. Io mapping may be the most uniform of the four, benefiting from hemispheric coverage on opposite sides of the moon from Voyager and Galileo. (Control of Voyager images are potentially compromised by uncertainties in reseau locations). Global color coverage of Io by Galileo’s infrared sensitive cameras is uneven, ranging from 1.5 to 10 km resolution. New Horizons observed the satellites at resolutions of ten’s of kilometers, insufficient to improve global maps but sufficient to improve mapping of selected subtle large-scale topographic deflections on Europa and to produce a new map of Io (as of 2007, Kirchoff and Schenk, pers. comm.) for comparison to Voyager and Galileo era maps. Two global maps of the 4 satellites have been produced, one by the USGS and the other by the author (Atlas of the Galilean Satellites, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009). The new Atlas includes the only complete set of controlled mosaics of high-resolution Galileo and Voyager images. Priority needs for future mapping include a completing of global mapping down to 1 km resolution to permit determination of control nets for each satellite to better than 1 km precision. Mapping down to on the order of 100-300 meters for at least 70% of satellite surfaces is desired for global geologic mapping of terrain types.

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