Probing Europa's interior with natural sound sources

Abstract

Europa's interior structure may be determined by relatively simple and robust seismo-acoustic echo sounding techniques. The strategy is to use ice cracking events or impacts that are hypothesized to occur regularly on Europa's surface as sources of opportunity. A single passive geophone on Europa's surface may then be used to estimate the thickness of its ice shell and the depth of its ocean by measuring the travel time of seismo-acoustic reflections from the corresponding internal strata. Quantitative analysis is presented with full-field seismo-acoustic modeling of the Europan environment. This includes models for Europan ambient noise and conditions on signal-to-noise ratio necessary for the proposed technique to be feasible. The possibility of determining Europa's ice layer thickness by surface wave and modal analysis with a single geophone is also investigated.