TY - JOUR
T1 - On the in-situ detectability of Europa's water vapour plumes from a flyby mission
AU - Huybrighs, Hans L F
AU - Futaana, Yoshifumi
AU - Barabash, Stanislav
AU - Wieser, Martin
AU - Wurz, Peter
AU - Krupp, Norbert
AU - Glassmeier, Karl Heinz
AU - Vermeersen, Bert
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - We investigate the feasibility of detecting water molecules (H2O) and water ions (H2O+) from the Europa plumes from a flyby mission. A Monte Carlo particle tracing method is used to simulate the trajectories of neutral particles under the influence of Europa's gravity field and ionized particles under the influence of Jupiter's magnetic field and the convectional electric field. As an example mission case we investigate the detection of neutral and ionized molecules using the Particle Environment Package (PEP), which is part of the scientific payload of the future JUpiter ICy moon Explorer mission (JUICE). We consider plumes that have a mass flux that is three orders of magnitude lower than what has been inferred from recent Hubble observations (Roth et al., 2014a). We demonstrate that the in-situ detection of H2O and H2O+ from these low mass flux plumes is possible by the instruments with large margins with respect to background and instrument noise. The signal to noise ratio for neutrals is up to ∼5700 and ∼33 for ions. We also show that the geometry of the plume source, either a point source or 1000km-long crack, does not influence the density distributions, and thus, their detectability. Furthermore, we discuss how to separate the plume-originating H2O and H2O+ from exospheric H2O and H2O+. The separation depends strongly on knowledge of the density distribution of Europa's exosphere.
AB - We investigate the feasibility of detecting water molecules (H2O) and water ions (H2O+) from the Europa plumes from a flyby mission. A Monte Carlo particle tracing method is used to simulate the trajectories of neutral particles under the influence of Europa's gravity field and ionized particles under the influence of Jupiter's magnetic field and the convectional electric field. As an example mission case we investigate the detection of neutral and ionized molecules using the Particle Environment Package (PEP), which is part of the scientific payload of the future JUpiter ICy moon Explorer mission (JUICE). We consider plumes that have a mass flux that is three orders of magnitude lower than what has been inferred from recent Hubble observations (Roth et al., 2014a). We demonstrate that the in-situ detection of H2O and H2O+ from these low mass flux plumes is possible by the instruments with large margins with respect to background and instrument noise. The signal to noise ratio for neutrals is up to ∼5700 and ∼33 for ions. We also show that the geometry of the plume source, either a point source or 1000km-long crack, does not influence the density distributions, and thus, their detectability. Furthermore, we discuss how to separate the plume-originating H2O and H2O+ from exospheric H2O and H2O+. The separation depends strongly on knowledge of the density distribution of Europa's exosphere.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84994805001&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6fcd16bd-8df9-46f4-b628-018474b9d4f1
U2 - 10.1016/j.icarus.2016.10.026
DO - 10.1016/j.icarus.2016.10.026
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84994805001
SN - 0019-1035
VL - 289
SP - 270
EP - 280
JO - Icarus
JF - Icarus
ER -