Impact craters: An ice study on Rhea

Abstract

The goal of this project is to study the properties of H2O ice in the environment of the Saturn satellites and in particular to measure the relative amounts of crystalline and amorphous H2O ice in and around two craters on Rhea. The craters are remnants of cataclysmic events that, by raising the local temperature, melted the ice, which subsequently crystallized. Based on laboratory experiments it is expected that, when exposed to ion bombardment at the temperatures typical of the Saturn satellites, the crystalline structure of the ice will be broken, resulting in the disordered, amorphous phase. We therefore expect the ice in and around the craters to be partially crystalline and partially amorphous.We have designed a technique that estimates the relative amounts of crystalline and amorphous H2O ice based on measurements of the distortion of the 2-μm spectral absorption band. The technique is best suited for planetary surfaces that are predominantly icy, but works also for surfaces slightly contaminated with other ices and non-ice components. We apply the tool to two areas around the Inktomi and the Obatala craters. The first is a young impact crater on the leading hemisphere of Rhea, the second is an older one on the trailing hemisphere.For each crater we obtain maps of the fraction of crystalline ice, which were overlain onto Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) images of the satellite searching for correlations between crystallinity and geography. For both craters the largest fractions of crystalline ice are in the center, as would be intuitively expected since the ‘ground zero’ areas should be most affected by the effects of the impact. The overall distribution of the crystalline ice fraction maps the shape of the crater and, in the case of Inktomi, of the rays. The Inktomi crater ranges between a maximum fraction of 67% crystalline ice to a minimum of 39%. The Obatala crater varies between a maximum of 51% and a minimum of 33%.Based on simplifying assumptions and the knowledge that crystalline ice exposed to ion bombardment transforms into amorphous at a known rate, we estimate the age of the Obatala crater to be ∼450Ma.