Europa

Replicating The Flyby Sampling Of Salty Ocean World Ice Grains Using Impact Ionization Mass Spectrometry

By Keith Cowing
Status Report
astro-ph.EP
August 15, 2025
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Replicating The Flyby Sampling Of Salty Ocean World Ice Grains Using Impact Ionization Mass Spectrometry
Analysis of exospheric ice grains at Europa by SUDA. In addition to analyzing any potential plume material, the Europa Clipper Surface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) investigation will detect (and potentially quantify) chemical species embedded in ice grains directly sourced from Europa’s surface by constraining their area of origin. Continuous micrometeroid bombardment lofts surface material into Europa’s exosphere, which will be analyzed directly by SUDA during flyby. Non-icy surface material is expected to be compositionally distinct from the nearly pure water ice material comprising Europa’s surface “background” (Top; noted as Type A detections and Type B detections, respectively). Using an ejecta cloud model coupled with SUDA’s ability to determine the velocity vector of impacting particles, the area from which each ice grain originated can be determined with a spatial resolution dependent on spacecraft altitude (15). A single Monte Carlo simulation for SUDA detections over chaos terrain during the sixth Europa flyby in the 19F23v2 tour design are shown (bottom). The left plot shows the origin of ice grains detected by SUDA; the right plot shows the simulated time sequence for these detections. C/A marks the point of closest approach. Tracing ice grain composition to an area on Europa’s surface will provide ground-truth measurements for interpreting remote sensing data and enable direct compositional measurements of Europa’s surface geology. Bottom images adapted with permission from ref. (16). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. — astro-ph.EP

The Europa Clipper mission will arrive at the Jovian system in 2030 and analyze ice grains sourced from the icy material on its surface using impact mass spectrometry, which will provide key constraints on Europa’s chemical composition and habitability.

However, deriving quantitative compositional information from spaceborne impact mass spectra of ice grains has historically proven difficult due to the confounding effects of composition and impact velocity, coupled with difficulties in accelerating ice grains to spacecraft velocities under analogous sampling conditions.

Using a novel hypervelocity ice grain acceleration and impact mass spectrometry method, we quantify the degree to which the mass spectra of NaCl-rich ice grains are influenced by chemical composition and impact velocity variations within the flyby velocity ranges planned for the Europa Clipper mission.

These results suggest that high-fidelity studies quantifying composition and velocity-related effects in impact mass spectra may be necessary to accurately interpret data collected at Europa and other ocean worlds in the future.

K. Marshall Seaton (1), Bryana L. Henderson (1), Sascha Kempf (2), Sarah E. Waller (1), Morgan E. C. Miller (1), Paul D. Asimow (3), Morgan L. Cable (1) ((1) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, (2) Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, (3) Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology)

Comments: 29 pages, 11 figures, 1 table
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Space Physics (physics.space-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2508.10169 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2508.10169v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2508.10169
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Submission history
From: Marshall Seaton
[v1] Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:04:24 UTC (1,604 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10169
Astrobiology,

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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