Hiding from Jupiter’s Radiation

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January 19,
2009

Categories: Feature Stories Jupiter System

Jan 19, 2009

The radiation belts around Jupiter as seen by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, as it flew by in
January 2001. The three radar images show changes in the belts over the course of
Jupiter’s 10-hour rotation.
Credit: NASA/JPL

It’s dangerous to remain too long inside the radiation belts of Jupiter. The high-energy
particles can damage space probes, and they also can destroy biological molecules or
other signatures of life that might exist on inner moons like Europa. A new study plans to
determine just how hazardous an impact the radiation belts have on the Jovian system.

“Our goal is to find some areas that might be interesting for a future mission to explore,”
says Wes Patterson of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

Patterson and his colleagues are building a detailed map of the surface of Europa and
another map of its sister moon Ganymede. The project—led by Louise Prockter of John
Hopkins University as part of NASA’s Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program—will
identify dead zones where radiation would likely fry any interesting chemical
compounds, as well as possible safe havens that might harbor material expelled from
the ocean below.

The work should provide targets for follow-up characterization by the next mission to
Europa, which will probably be an orbiter. However, Patterson says it will be hard to
directly address the question of life from orbit, so he and his colleagues envision their
radiation maps guiding subsequent missions that will presumably land on the surface.

“This should help ensure that we get the best bang for the buck from a lander,” Patterson
says.

Letting the ocean come to us

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It is presumed that both Europa and Ganymede have oceans beneath their icy crusts.

A “family portrait” of Jupiter with four of its moons. From top to bottom: Io, Europa,
Ganymede and Callisto.
Credit: NASA.

Europa is the more interesting of the two because there are indications that the ocean
occasionally wells up from below and washes over the surface. This connection between

“In the near future there is very little chance we will get to the ocean, but geology tells us
that there are pathways of communication between the surface and the ocean,”
Patterson says.

These potential pathways appear on the Europan surface as ridges and coarse patches
of terrain. The ridges may be fractures in the ice that extend down to the ocean below.
The coarse patches (called chaos) may be where the ice has melted through, or where
convection is bringing up warm ice that once had contact with the ocean below.

The ice surrounding some of these geologic features appears to have its own unique
chemical signatures.

The surface of Europa shows signs of cracks that could allow material to pass to and fro
between the ocean below and the irradiated surface.
Credit: Calvin J. Hamilton, Voyager Project, JPL, NASA

“This material, if from the ocean, may contain molecular evidence for life in the ocean,”
says Bob Carlson from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is not a part of this project.

Of particular interest are molecules—such as hydrogen sulfide, methane and

formaldehyde – that provide energy for organisms living in Earth’s extreme
environments. These same nutrients may play a role in Europa’s deep cold ocean.

Radiation menace

Assuming the ocean contains biologically-useful compounds and that some of these find
their way to the surface, they may not survive very long there.

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“It is unlikely that any big molecules will be found in exposed regions,” says Chris
Paranicas, also from Johns Hopkins University.

Radiation in the form of high-energy electrons and ions continuously bombard the top
layers of Europa’s icy crust. This deadly dose is due to the fact that Europa—along with
the three other Galilean moons (Io, Ganymede and Callisto)—orbits within Jupiter’s
radiation belts.

These belts are much like Earth’s Van Allen belts but bigger, since Jupiter’s magnetic field
is ten times stronger than Earth’s. Electrons and ions from the solar wind become
trapped in the magnetic field and spiral down onto Jupiter’s poles to create impressive
auroras.

The radiation in Jupiter’s belts is a million times more intense than in Earth’s belts. For
this reason, spacecraft—such as the Galileo orbiter—have typically tried to spend as little
time as possible inside the belts. Although the radiation is generally well-understood, no
one has yet figured out precisely what the effect is on Jupiter’s moons.

“We want to give

the radiation
‘weather’ on the
surface,”
An aurora on Jupiter’s seen in UV light by the Hubble Space Telescope. Paranicas says.
Credit: John T. Clarke/Univ. of Michigan, ESA, NASA
The researchers
will incorporate
data from the
Voyager and
Galileo missions in order to estimate how the radiation dose varies across the icy outer
layers of Europa and Ganymede. Neither moon has much of an atmosphere, so particles
stream down to the surface unimpeded and barrel into the ice.

The ions from the belt can penetrate about a millimeter into the ice. Electrons reach
roughly a centimeter down, but they also emit high-energy photons that can go as far as
a meter deep. Regardless of the type of radiation, these high-energy particles will rip
electrons off of molecules, thereby “oxidizing” everything on the surface.

This chemical destruction ironically could be vital to any potential life below. The ocean is
believed to contain little to no dissolved oxygen (known as a “reducing environment”). In
such an oxygen-poor bath, life could harvest chemical energy by combining surface
oxidants with chemicals in the ocean that react with them (so-called “reductants”).

For such mixing to happen, the same geological process that brings oceanic material up
to the surface must also be shuttling surface material down to the ocean.

Safe havens

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 This drawing illustrates how flows of electrons steered by Jupiter’s magnetic field connect
the upper atmosphere near Jupiter’s north and south poles to three of Jupiter’s large
moons: Io (left), Europa (right) and Ganymede (center).
Credit: NASA/John Spencer, Lowell Observatory and John Clarke, Boston University

If this complicated procedure was taking place on Europa, it would be hard to verify since
the radiation would destroy all evidence for it on the surface of the moon.

However, all is not lost.

The radiation belts are rotating around Jupiter faster than Europa does. This results in
the radiation predominantly striking the trailing hemisphere of the moon—which is
always the same portion of the moon since Europa is locked in a synchronous orbit
around Jupiter. Moreover, there is a constant stream of micrometeorites landing on the
leading hemisphere. These tiny rocks form a regolith layer up to 3 meters thick that could
protect oceanic material from incoming radiation.

“Optimizing the search for interesting [molecular] species requires looking for young
areas that aren’t heavily irradiated,” Carlson says. “The leading hemisphere is still heavily
bombarded and won’t provide pristine samples by itself, but some regions may provide
effective topographic shielding.”

One of the goals of the project is to pinpoint these protected regions. Patterson thinks
the boundary between trailing and leading hemispheres may be a good target. Here,
enough radiation may hit to see some of the positive effects, while enough regolith may
be present to shield out most of the negative effects.

Publication of press-releases or other out-sourced content does not signify endorsement

or affiliation of any kind.
By Michael Schirber

Related Websites:
Astrobiology Roadmap Goal 2: Life in Our Solar System

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