[X] My Assistant

[Juramike]

Now being picked up by the news, but here is the original press release regarding an estimate of oxygen in Europa's subsurface ocean:

http://dps.aas.org/press/2009/Greenberg_9_October_2009.pdf

So how could this estimate affect the instrument package for the Jupiter-Europa flagship mission?
Are there ways to quantify oxygen in fresher ice from orbit?

(RADAR determination? Weird dielectric properties? Metal oxidation states? Rust?)

[Juramike]

The oxygen atmosphere and oxygen in the subsurface ocean both would originate from irradiation of the the surface ice.

The solar wind (and other ionizing radiation) penetrates a little into the surface ices and causes the some water molecules to break up and form oxygen (probably in the form of reactive oxygen species to start off with) encapsulated in ice.

As the ice falls into cracks or gets recycled into the subsurface ocean, the ice matrix melts and effectively releases oxygen and other oxidizing species.

...which can then run around and oxidize up any of the other species that exist in the water. So when the water shoots up from underneath, there might be a plethora of oxidized compounds (sulfates rather than sulfides) sitting in "stains" on the surface.

'Course any stuff from Io painting up Europa (IIRC these would be sulfides from Io) would get oxidized up by the surface ices (kinetics????), but that should be a fairly diffuse background.

[Julius]

Full inline quote removed - ADMIN

To me it sounds a bit far fetched but i'm no mathematician or physics expert so i cant comment about this hypothesis...i would think the thickness of the ice layer would affect to what extent this process oygenates the underlying water ocean?!

The fact that Io can be a source of sulphates detected on the surface of Europa,there's no way of finding out by an orbiter (except pattern of distribution)unless we have direct sampling of the water underneath Europas crust??