Related papers: LunaIcy: Exploring Europa's Icy Surface Microstruc…
The surface of Europa experiences a competition between thermally-induced crystallization and radiation-induced amorphization processes, leading to changes of its crystalline structure. The non-linear crystallization and…
Ice sintering is a form of metamorphism that drives the microstructural evolution of an aggregate of grains through surface and volume diffusion. This leads to an increase in the grain-to-grain contact area ("neck") and density of the…
The polarimetry of the light scattered by planetary surfaces is a powerful tool to provide constraints on their microstructure. To improve the interpretation of polarimetric data from icy surfaces, we have developed the POLarimeter for ICE…
Energetic particles continuously process water ice across astrophysical and planetary environments, from interstellar clouds and comets to icy planetary surfaces. Interpreting the resulting observables requires a physically grounded…
Physical processing of Europan surface water ice by thermal relaxation, charged particle bombardment, and possible cryovolcanic activity can alter the percentage of the crystalline form of water ice compared to that of the amorphous form of…
Thermal measurements constrain the physical properties of icy satellite surfaces, including grain size, porosity, and regolith structure. On Europa, analyses of the Galileo Photopolarimeter-Radiometer (PPR) dataset revealed thermal inertia…
The outer solar system may provide a potential habitat for extraterrestrial life. Remote sensing data from the Galileo spacecraft suggest that the jovian icy moons, Europa, Ganymede, and possibly Callisto, may harbor liquid water oceans…
The surface of Europa is geologically young and shows signs of current activity. Studying it from a photometric point of view gives us insight on its physical state. We used a collection of 57 images from Voyager's Imaging Science System…
Europa's icy surface likely overlies an ocean, but the ice thickness is not known. Here we model the temporal growth of a Europan shell of pure ice subject to varying ice-ocean heat fluxes, ice rheologies, and internal heating rates. Both…
We develop a long-term 1-D evolution model for icy satellites that couples multiple processes: water migration and differentiation, geochemical reactions and silicate phase transitions, compaction by self-gravity, and ablation. The model…
The surfaces of some icy moons, such as Jupiter's moon Europa, are heavily bombarded by energetic particles that can alter the surface materials and affect the composition of its exosphere. Detection of CO2 on Europa's surface indicate that…
We use a laboratory facility to study the sputtering properties of centimeter-thick porous water ice subjected to the bombardment of ions and electrons to better understand the formation of exospheres of the icy moons of Jupiter. Our ice…
The modelling of molecular excitation and dissociation processes relevant to astrochemistry requires the validation of theories by comparison with data generated from laboratory experimentation. The newly commissioned Ice Chamber for…
Sintering, as a thermal process at elevated temperature below the melting point, is widely used to bond contacting particles into engineering products such as ceramics, metals, polymers, and cemented carbides. Modelling and simulation as…
Models and observations suggest that ice-particle aggregation at and beyond the snowline dominates the earliest stages of planet-formation, which therefore is subject to many laboratory studies. However, the pressure-temperature gradients…
Ice and snow have sometime been classified as a viscoelastic or viscoplastic mate- rial according to temperature, strain rate, pressure and time scale. Throughout experimental studies presented in the literature, it has been observed that…
A fully implicit scheme is proposed for solving the heat equation in 1D heterogeneous media, available as a computationally efficient open-source Python code. The algorithm uses finite differences on an irregular grid and is unconditionally…
Europa's surface composition and evidence for cryovolcanic activity can provide insight into the properties and composition of the subsurface ocean, allowing the evaluation of its potential habitability. One promising avenue for revealing…
Cylindrical specimens of Martian and Lunar regolith simulants were molded using a salt water binder and sintered at various temperatures for comparing microstructure, mechanical properties and shrinkage. Material microstructure are reported…
Ice deposits on Earth provide an extended record of volcanism, planetary climate, and life. On Mars, such a record may extend as far back as tens to hundreds of millions of years (My), compared to only a few My on Earth. Here, we propose…