Ocean World Science with LUVOIR
Abstract
Following discoveries that multiple icy worlds are geologically active and host oceans, the US Congress mandated NASA in 2015 to "create an Ocean World Exploration Program whose primary goal is to discover extant life on another world." In response, a community effort has developed a Roadmap to Ocean Worlds (ROW). This effort has outlined goals, objectives, and investigations for ocean world exploration by targeted planetary missions [1]. Four overarching goals have been set: (1) identify ocean worlds in the Solar System, (2) characterize the ocean of each world, (3) characterize its habitability, and (4) search for life and investigate any biology there. In addressing these goals, targeted missions could be supplemented by next-generation telescopes. The LUVOIR concept study [2] provides a high end-member of the spatial resolution from near-Earth achievable in coming decades. The smallest details resolved would be about 5 km*(distance from Earth in AU)*(λ/500 nm)*(15 m/D) across, where λ is the observation wavelength and D the primary mirror diameter.LUVOIR's baselined high-definition imager, UV multi-object spectrograph, and high-resolution UV spectro-polarimeter would enable unique ocean world science that requires UV observations, long time baselines, and/or observing many objects. These observations would tackle ROW objective (1) by constraining the orbital and rotational properties of moon systems in order to identify tidal energy sources able to support an ocean (astrometry, feature tracking, giant planet seismology, sizes and lightcurves of distant objects), and identifying signatures of current geological activity or liquids (plumes, temporal surface or atmospheric/exospheric changes). Compositional information in the UV could also help address questions of objectives (2)-(4) complementarily to planetary mission data.Planetary spacecraft cannot stare at their targets for years and only part of the UV-VIS-NIR spectrum is accessible to ground-based assets. As demonstrated with Hubble Space Telescope observations of Europa's potential plumes, large space telescopes could open new avenues for ocean worlds research not amenable to other means of investigation.[1] Hendrix, Hurford, and ROW Team (2017) https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/ROW[2] Roberge et al., this session.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.P51B..07N
- Keywords:
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- 6207 Comparative planetology;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTSDE: 6296 Extra-solar planets;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTSDE: 6299 General or miscellaneous;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTSDE: 5464 Remote sensing;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS