Updated Europa gravity field and interior structure from a reanalysis of Galileo tracking data

Icarus ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 114187
Author(s):  
Luis Gomez Casajus ◽  
Marco Zannoni ◽  
Dario Modenini ◽  
Paolo Tortora ◽  
Francis Nimmo ◽  
...  
Icarus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 321 ◽  
pp. 272-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Le Maistre ◽  
A. Rivoldini ◽  
P. Rosenblatt

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Desprats ◽  
Daniel Arnold ◽  
Michel Blanc ◽  
Adrian Jäggi ◽  
Mingtao Li ◽  
...  

<p>The exploration of Callisto is part of the extensive interest in the icy moons characterization. Indeed, Callisto is the Galilean moon with the best-preserved records of the Jovian system formation. Led by the National Space Science Center (NSSC), Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), the planned Gan De mission aims to send an orbiter around Callisto in order to characterize its surface and interior. Potential orbit configurations are currently under study for the Gan De mission proposal.</p><p>As part of a global characterization of Callisto, its gravity field can be inferred using radio tracking data from an orbiter. Mission characteristics such as orbit type, Earth beta angle and solar elongation will have a direct influence on the recoverability of its gravity field parameters. In this study, we will analyse this influence from closed-loop simulations using the planetary extension of the Bernese GNSS Softwareai.</p><p>A number of reference orbits with different orbital characteristics will be selected for the Gan De mission and, using an extended force model, will be propagated from different starting dates and different initial Earth beta angles. Realistic Doppler tracking data (2-way X-band Doppler range rate) will be simulated as measurements from ground stations, with a dedicated noise model. These observations will then be used to reconstruct the orbit along with dynamical parameters. The focus of this presentation will be on the quality of the retrieved gravity field parameters and tidal Love number k2.</p>


2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xu-Hua ZHOU ◽  
Houtse HSU ◽  
Bin WU ◽  
Bi-Bo PENG ◽  
Yang LU

Science ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 344 (6179) ◽  
pp. 78-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Iess ◽  
D. J. Stevenson ◽  
M. Parisi ◽  
D. Hemingway ◽  
R. A. Jacobson ◽  
...  

The small and active Saturnian moon Enceladus is one of the primary targets of the Cassini mission. We determined the quadrupole gravity field of Enceladus and its hemispherical asymmetry using Doppler data from three spacecraft flybys. Our results indicate the presence of a negative mass anomaly in the south-polar region, largely compensated by a positive subsurface anomaly compatible with the presence of a regional subsurface sea at depths of 30 to 40 kilometers and extending up to south latitudes of about 50°. The estimated values for the largest quadrupole harmonic coefficients (106J2= 5435.2 ± 34.9, 106C22= 1549.8 ± 15.6, 1σ) and their ratio (J2/C22= 3.51 ± 0.05) indicate that the body deviates mildly from hydrostatic equilibrium. The moment of inertia is around 0.335MR2, whereMis the mass andRis the radius, suggesting a differentiated body with a low-density core.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isamu Matsuyama ◽  
Antony Trinh

<p><span>We assess the gravity constraints on the interior structure of Europa in anticipation of the Europa Clipper mission.</span></p><p><span>Moore and Schubert (2000) illustrated that the diurnal tide amplitude, quantified by the diurnal (tidal) Love numbers, k<sub>2</sub><sup>d</sup> and h<sub>2</sub><sup>d</sup>, can be used to determine the presence of a subsurface liquid ocean due to the significant increase in tidal amplitudes associated with the mechanical decoupling of the shell with a subsurface ocean.<span>  </span>However, they considered a limited range of possible interior parameters except the ice shell rigidity, which was assumed to be in the range of 1-10 GPa. We consider a wider range of possible interior structure parameters and a more realistic ice shell rigidity range of 1-4 GPa. Inferring the presence of a subsurface ocean is slightly easier than previously thought (Verma & Margot 2018), with required absolute precisions of 0.08 for k<sub>2</sub><sup>d</sup> , and 0.44 for h<sub>2</sub><sup>d</sup> .</span></p><p><span>Previous work have considered diurnal (tidal) gravity constraints alone or static gravity constraints alone using a forward modeling approach (e.g.<span>  </span>Anderson et al., 1998; Moore and Schubert, 2000; Wahr et al., 2006). We evaluate constraints on interior structure parameters using Bayesian inversion with the mass, static gravity, and diurnal gravity as constraints, allowing a probabilistic view of Europa's interior structure. Given the same relative uncertainties, the static Love numbers provide stronger constraints on the interior structure relative to those from the mean moment of inertia (MOI). Additionally, the static Love numbers can be inferred directly from the static gravity field whereas inferring the MOI requires the Radau-Darwin approximation.</span></p><p><span>Jointly considered with the static shape, the static gravity field can constrain the average and long-wavelength thickness of the shell. For an isostatically compensated shell, it is usual to conceptualize the crust as a series of independently floating columns of equal cross-sectional area which, by application of Archimedes' principle, should have equal mass above the depth of compensation. However, this approach is unphysical in the presence of curvature and self-gravitation. We consider alternative prescriptions of Airy isostasy: the equal-pressure prescription (Hemingway and Matsuyama, 2017), and the minimum-stress prescription (Dahlen 1982; Beuthe et al., 2016; Trinh et al., 2019).<span>  </span>The gravitational coefficients are more sensitive to shell thickness than would be expected from the classical (equal-mass) approach, illustrating that the equal-mass prescription can lead to large errors in the inferred average shell thickness and its lateral variations.</span></p><p><span>Diurnal gravity data alone can only constrain the product of the shell rigidity and thickness (Moore and Schubert, 2000; Wahr et al., 2006). An additional observational constraint that is sensitive to these parameters is the libration amplitude, which can be obtained from direct imaging or from altimeter data. We show that a joint gravity and libration analysis is able to separately constrain the shell thickness and rigidity.</span></p>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Duwe ◽  
Igor Koch ◽  
Jakob Flury ◽  
Akbar Shabanloui

<p>At our Institute we compute monthly gravity potential solutions from GRACE/GRACE-FO level 1B data by using the variational equations approach. The gravity field is recovered with our own MATLAB software "GRACE-SIGMA" that was recently updated in order to reduce the calculation time with parallel computing approach by approx. 80%. Also the processing chain has changed to update the background modeling and we made tests with different orbit types and different parametrizations. We discuss progress to include laser ranging interferometer data in gravity field solutions. We present validation results and analyze the properties of postfit range-rate residuals.</p>


Icarus ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Lorell ◽  
George H. Born ◽  
Edward J. Christensen ◽  
Pasquale B. Esposito ◽  
J. Frank Jordan ◽  
...  

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