Volume Erupted During Cryovolcanic Events on Europa
Abstract
Jupiter's moon Europa is entirely covered with water ice, and its very complex and young surface exhibits morphologies that might be interpreted to have formed as a result of cryovolcanic activity. In particular, lobate structures and smooth terrains could be formed by the eruption of liquid water at the surface. In this context, understanding whether and how liquid water is bought at the surface is useful to help with the design of the future missions targeting this satellite. In Lesage et al., 2019 we demonstrated that the eruption of liquid water from a freezing subsurface reservoir is plausible. We also predict that during a cryovolcanic eruption, up to 1% of the water contained in the reservoir is erupted at the surface, which corresponds to volumes of cryolavas ranging from 103 to 108 m3 for plausible reservoir volumes.
We now try to verify these results using the images of the cryovolcanic features observed at the surface. To know the volume of these structures, we would like to product Digital Elevation Models (DEM) of Europa's surface thank to stereoscopic process. We use the ISIS toolbox for images pre-processing, and the Ames Stereo Pipeline developed from the Ames NASA team to perform the stereoscopy. Thanks to the DEM obtained, we hope to infer the volume of some cryovolcanic features, with the final aim to better constrain the characteristics of the eruptions producing these features.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.P53D3494L
- Keywords:
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- 0726 Ice sheets;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 6207 Comparative planetology;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS;
- 6221 Europa;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS;
- 6282 Enceladus;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS