Ocean Worlds of the Outer Solar System

A key discovery from the past six decades of solar system exploration is that liquid water oceans may be a common planetary phenomenon. At least six ice-covered moons of the outer solar system present compelling evidence for subsurface oceans, and thus provide highly compelling targets in our search for life beyond Earth, and for the emerging field of comparative oceanography. In this talk I will briefly describe several lines of evidence for these oceans, and then detail some of the latest discoveries made about Jupiter’s moon Europa, with a focus on experiments conducted in my lab, and observations made with HST and JWST. I will also provide an overview of missions that will explore these worlds in the coming decades, and describe how exploration of Earth’s ocean and cryosphere is helping to guide our understanding of the potential habitability of these alien oceans.

Speaker: Kevin Hand, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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