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The surface of Europa could contain the compositional imprint of a underlying interior ocean, but competing hypotheses differ over whether spectral observations from the Galileo spacecraft show the signature of ocean evaporates or simply surface radiation products unrelated to the interior. Using adaptive optics at the W.M. Keck Observatory, we have obtained spatially resolved spectra of most of the disk of Europa at a spectral resolution ~40 times higher than seen by the Galileo spacecraft. These spectra show a previously undetected distinct signature of magnesium sulfate salts on Europa, but the magnesium sulfate is confined to the trailing hemisphere and spatially correlated with the presence of radiation products like sulfuric acid and SO2. On the leading, less irradiated, hemisphere, our observations rule out the presence of many of the proposed sulfate salts, but do show the presence of distorted water ice bands. Based on the association of the potential MgSO4, detection on the trailing side with other radiation products, we conclude that MgSO4 is also a radiation product, rather than a constituent of a Europa ocean brine. Based on ocean chemistry models, we hypothesize that, prior to irradiation, magnesium is primarily in the form of MgCl2, and we predict that NaCl and KCl are even more abundant, and, in fact, dominate the non-ice component of the leading hemisphere. We propose observational tests of this new hypothesis.
Seismic data will be a vital geophysical constraint on internal structure of Europa if we land instruments on the surface. Quantifying expected seismic activity on Europa both in terms of large, recognizable signals and ambient background noise is im
Roth et al (2014a) reported evidence for plumes of water venting from a southern high latitude region on Europa - spectroscopic detection of off-limb line emission from the dissociation products of water. Here, we present Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
We present hemispherically resolved spectra of the surface of Europa from ~3.1--4.13 microns, which we obtained using the near infrared spectrometer NIRSPEC on the Keck II telescope. These include the first high-quality L-band spectra of the surface
With the adaptive optics (AO) system on the 10 m Keck-II telescope, we acquired a high quality set of 84 images at 14 epochs of asteroid (52) Europa on 2005 January 20. The epochs covered its rotation period and, by following its changing shape and o
We present mid-infrared SOFIA/EXES spectroscopy of Europa, seeking direct evidence of the presence of water vapor arising from plumes venting from the surface of Europa. We place quantitatively useful upper limits on the strength of water vibrational