SoylentNews

takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Even Ganymede is Showing Tectonic Activity. We're Going to Need Another Icy Moon Orbiter [universetoday.com]

Ganymede was shaped by pronounced periods of tectonic activity in the past, according to a new paper. It's no longer active and its surface is more-or-less frozen in place now. But this discovery opens the door to better planning for future missions to Jupiter's other frozen moon Europa. Unlike Ganymede, Europa is still tectonically active, and understanding past geological activity on Ganymede helps us understand present-day Europa.

Ganymede is one of Jupiter's moons, and it has a sub-surface ocean under a solid layer of frost and ice. The moon shows signs of strike-slip faulting, or strike-slip tectonism. On Earth, this type of tectonic activity created features like the San Andreas fault [wikipedia.org], a seismically-active region at the boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate.

Europa is considered a prime target in the search for life in our Solar System because of its sub-surface ocean. Europa is exposed to Jupiter's intense radiation, but the icy sphere surrounding the sub-surface ocean may act as a radiation barrier, protecting life from its harmful effects. Not only is the sub-surface ocean protected from radiation, it's warm.

Ganymede [wikipedia.org] will be visited by ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer [wikipedia.org], which should launch in June 2022, reach Jupiter orbit in October 2029, and orbit Ganymede starting in 2033. The mission may include a Russian-built Ganymede lander.

Morphological mapping of Ganymede: Investigating the role of strike-slip tectonics in the evolution of terrain types [sciencedirect.com] (DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2018.06.024) (DX [doi.org])

1982 paper: The tectonics of Ganymede [nature.com] (DOI: 10.1038/295290a0) (DX [doi.org])

Related: NASA Analyzes Forgotten Galileo Data from Flyby of Ganymede [soylentnews.org]

Original Submission