Abstract. It has been proposed that Jupiter's satellite Europa currently possesses a global subsurface ocean of liquid water. Galileo gravity data verify that the satellite is differentiated into an outer H20 layer about 100 km thick but cannot determine the current physical state of this layer (liquid or solid). Here we summarize the geological evidence regarding an extant subsurface ocean, concentrating on Galileo imaging data. We describe and assess

In this article, we summarize the work of the NASA Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG) Roadmaps to Ocean Worlds (ROW) group. The aim of this group is to assemble the scientific framework that will guide the exploration of ocean worlds, and to identify and prioritize science objectives for ocean worlds over the next several decades. The overarching goal of an Ocean Worlds exploration program as defined by ROW is to “identify ocean worlds, characterize their oceans, evaluate their habitability, search for life, and ultimately understand any life we find.” The ROW team supports the creation of an exploration program that studies the full spectrum of ocean worlds, that is, not just the exploration of known ocean worlds such as Europa but candidate ocean worlds such as Triton as well. The ROW team finds that the confirmed ocean worlds Enceladus, Titan, and Europa are the highest priority bodies to target in the near term to address ROW goals. Triton is the highest priority candidate ocean world to target in the near term. A major finding of this study is that, to map out a coherent Ocean Worlds Program, significant input is required from studies here on Earth; rigorous Research and Analysis studies are called for to enable some future ocean worlds missions to be thoughtfully planned and undertaken. A second finding is that progress needs to be made in the area of collaborations between Earth ocean scientists and extraterrestrial ocean scientists.

No abstract

Recent observations of the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus by the Cassini spacecraft have revealed an active world, powered by internal heat. In this paper, we propose that localized subsurface melting on Enceladus has produced an internal south polar sea. Evidence for this localized sea comes from the shape of Enceladus, which does not match a differentiated body at its current orbital position. We show that melting induced by the observed heat flow at the south pole produces a large enough pit to match the shape of Enceladus with a differentiated rock and ice interior. Numerical modeling of melting and ice flow shows that the sea produced beneath the south pole is stable against inflow of ductile ice from its surroundings for the duration of the heating. The shape modification due to melting also produces a negative degree-two gravity anomaly, which can reorient the spin axis of Enceladus in order to place the sea at the pole.

[1] Hydrothermal plumes may be responsible for transmitting radiogenic or tidally generated heat from Europa's rocky interior through a liquid ocean to the base of its ice shell. This process has been implicated in the formation of chaos regions and lenticulae by melting or exciting convection in the ice layer. In contrast to earlier work, we argue that Europa's ocean should be treated as an unstratified fluid. We have adapted and expanded upon existing work describing buoyant plumes in a rotating, unstratified environment. We discuss the scaling laws governing the flow and geometry of plumes on Europa and perform a laboratory experiment to obtain scaling constants and to visualize plume behavior in a Europa-like parameter regime. We predict that hydrothermal plumes on Europa are of a lateral scale (at least 25-50 km) comparable to large chaos regions; they are too broad to be responsible for the formation of individual lenticulae. Plume heat fluxes (0.1-10 W/m 2 ) are too weak to allow complete melt-through of the ice layer. Current speeds in the plume (3-8 mm/s) are much slower than indicated by previous studies. The observed movement of ice blocks in the Conamara Chaos region is unlikely to be driven by such weak flow.