Monthly Archives: December 2017

Satellites of Saturn

Water-ice boundary on Titan

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Hi there! Titan may be the most famous satellite in the Solar System, I realize that I never devoted a post to it. It is high time to make it so. I present you Does Titan’s long-wavelength topography contain information about subsurface ocean dynamics? by Jakub Kvorka, Ondřej Čadek, Gabriel Tobie & Gaël Choblet, which has recently been accepted for publication in Icarus. This paper tries to understand the mechanisms responsible for the location of the boundary between the icy crust and the subsurface ocean. This affects the thickness of the crust, which itself affects the topography of Titan.

Outline

Titan
The quest for the internal ocean
Modeling the ice-water boundary
Resolution by spectral decomposition
The role of the grain size
In the future
The study and its authors

Titan

The existence of Titan is known since 1655 thanks to the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens. It was the only known satellite of Saturn until the discovery of Iapetus in 1671. It is the second largest natural satellite of the Solar System (mean radius: 2,575 km), and it orbits Saturn in almost 16 days, on a 3% eccentric and almost equatorial orbit (actually, a small tilt is due to the gravitational influence of the Sun).

It has interesting physical characteristics:

  • A thick atmosphere (pressure at the surface: 1.5 bar) mainly composed of nitrogen, with clouds of methane and ethane.
  • A complex surface. We can find hydrocarbon seas, i.e. lakes of methane and ethane (Kraken Mare, Ontario Lacus…), we also have a mountain chain, which features have been named after Tolkien’s Lords of the Rings (Gandalf Colles, Erebor Mons,…). There are some impact craters as well, but not that many, which suggests a geologically young surface. There is probably cryovolcanism on Titan, i.e. eruptions of volatile elements. The surface and the atmosphere interact, i.e. there are exchange between the liquid methane and ethane of the lakes and the gaseous ones present in the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is responsible for erosion of the surface, for winds which are likely to create dunes, and for heat exchanges.
  • A global subsurface ocean, lying under the icy crust.
Map of Titan.
Map of Titan.

The quest for the internal ocean

An internal, water ocean is considered to be of high interest for habitability, i.e. we cannot exclude the presence of bacteriological life in such an environment. This makes Titan one of the priority targets for future investigations.

The presence of the ocean was hinted long ago, from the consideration that, at some depth, the water ice covering the surface would be in such conditions of temperature and pressure that it should not be solid anymore, but liquid. The detection of this ocean has been hoped from the Cassini-Huygens mission, and this was a success. More precisely:

  • The rotation of the surface of Titan is synchronous, i.e. Titan shows on average the same face to Saturn, like our Moon, but with a significant obliquity (0.3°), which could reveal the presence of a global ocean which would decouple the rotation of the crust from the one of the core.
  • A Schumann resonance, i.e. an electromagnetic signal, has been detected by the lander Huygens in the atmosphere of Titan, during its fall. This could be due to an excitation of a magnetic field by a global conductive layer, i.e. a global subsurface ocean.
  • The gravitational Love number k2, which gives the amplitude of the response of the gravity field of Titan to the variations of the gravitational attraction of Saturn, is too large to be explained by a fully solid Titan.

All of these clues have convinced almost all of the scientific community that Titan has a global subsurface ocean. Determining its depth, thickness, composition,… is another story. In the study I present you today, the authors tried to elucidate the connection between its depth and the surface topography.

Modeling the ice-water boundary

The authors tried to determine the depth of the melting point of the water ice with respect to the latitude and longitude. This phase boundary is the thickness of the icy crust. For that, they wrote down the equations governing the viscoelastic deformation of the crust, its thermal evolution, and the motion of the boundary.

The viscoelastic deformation, i.e. deformation with dissipation, is due to the varying tidal action of Saturn, and the response depends on the properties of the material, i.e. rigidity, viscosity… The law ruling the behavior of the ice is here the Andrade law… basically it is a Maxwell rheology at low frequencies, i.e. elastic behavior for very slow deformations, viscoelastic behavior when the deformations gets faster… and for very fast excitation frequencies (tidal frequencies), the Maxwell model, which is based on one parameter (the Maxwell time, which gives an idea of the period of excitation at the transition between elastic and viscoelastic behavior), underestimates the dissipation. This is where the more complex Andrade model is useful. The excitation frequencies are taken in the variations of the distance Titan-Saturn, which are ruled by the gravitational perturbations of the Sun, of the rings, of the other satellites…

These deformations and excitations are responsible for variations of the temperature, which are also ruled by physical properties of the material (density, thermal conductivity), and which will determine whether the water should be solid or liquid. As a consequence, they will induce a motion of the phase change boundary.

Resolution by spectral decomposition

The equations ruling the variables of the problem are complex, in particular because they are coupled. Moreover, we should not forget that the density, thickness, temperature, resulting heat flows… not only depend on time, but also on where you are on the surface of Titan, i.e. the latitude and the longitude. To consider the couplings between the different surface elements, the authors did not use a finite-element modeling, but a spectral method instead.

The idea is to consider that the deformation of the crust is the sum of periodic deformations, with respect to the longitude and latitude. The basic shape is a sphere (order 0). If you want to be a little more accurate, you say that Titan is triaxial (order 2). And if you want to be more accurate, you introduce higher orders, which would induce bulges at non equatorial latitudes, north-south asymmetries for odd orders, etc. It is classical to decompose the tidal potential under a spectral form, and the authors succeeded to solve the equations of the problem in writing down the variables as sums of spherical harmonics.

The role of the grain size

And the main result is that the grain size of the ice plays a major role. In particular, the comparison between the resulting topography and the one measured by the Cassini mission up to the 3rd order shows that we need grains larger than 10 mm to be consistent with the observations. The authors reached an equilibrium in at the most 10 Myr, i.e. the crust is shaped in a few million years. They also addressed the influence of other parameters, like the rigidity of the ice, but with much less significant outcomes. Basically, the location of the melting / crystallization boundary is ruled by the grain size.

In the future

Every new study is another step forward. Others will follow. At least two directions can be expected.

Refinements of the theory

The authors honestly admit that the presence of other compounds in the ocean, like ammonia, is not considered here. Adding such compounds could affect the behavior of the ocean and the phase boundary. This would require at least one additional parameter, i.e. the fraction of ammonia. But the methodology presented here would still be valid, and additional studies would be incremental improvements of this one.
A possible implication of these results is the ocean dynamics, which is pretty difficult to model.

More data?

Another step forward could come from new data. Recently the mission proposal Dragonfly has been selected as a finalist by the NASA’s New Frontiers program. It would be a rotorcraft lander on Titan. Being selected as a finalist is a financial encouragement to refine and mature the concept within the year 2018, before final decision in July 2019 (see video below).

The study and its authors

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Asteroids: Trans-Neptunian Objects, Mean-motion resonances

Does Neptune have binary Trojans?

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Hi there! Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are known to share their orbits with small bodies, called Trojans. This is made possible by a law of celestial mechanics, which specifies that the points located 60° ahead and behind a planet on its orbit are stable. Moreover, there are many binary objects in the Solar System, but no binary asteroid have been discovered as Trojans of Neptune. This motivates the following study, Dynamical evolution of a fictitious population of binary Neptune Trojans, by Adrián Brunini, which has recently been accepted for publication in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In this study, the author wonders under which conditions a binary Trojan of Neptune could survive, which almost means could be observed now.

Outline

The coorbital resonance
The Trojans of Neptune
Binary asteroids
Numerical simulations
Survival of the binaries
Challenging this model
The study and its author

The coorbital resonance

The coorbital resonance is a 1:1 mean-motion resonance. This means that the two involved bodies have on average the same orbital frequency around their parent one. In the specific case of the Trojan of a planet, these two objects orbit the Sun with the same period, and the mass ratio between them makes that the small body is strongly affected by the planet, however the planet is not perturbed by the asteroid. But we can have this synchronous resonance even if the mass ratio is not huge. For instance, we have two coorbital satellites of Saturn, Janus and Epimetheus, which have a mass ratio of only 3.6. Both orbit Saturn in ~16 hours, but in experiencing strong mutual perturbations. They are stable anyway.

In the specific problem of the restricted (the mass of the asteroid is negligible), planar (let us assume that the planet and the asteroid orbit in the same plane), circular (here, we neglect the eccentricity of the two orbits) 3-body (the Sun, the planet and the asteroid) problem, it can be shown that if the planet and the asteroid orbit at the same rate, then there are 5 equilibriums, for which the gravitational actions of the planet and the Sun cancel out. 3 of them, named L1, L2 and L3, are unstable, and lie on the Sun-planet axis. The 2 remaining ones, i.e. L4 and L5, lag 60° ahead and behind the planet, and are stable. As a consequence, the orbits with small oscillations around L4 and L5 are usually stable, even if the real configuration has some limited eccentricity and mutual inclination. Other stable trajectories exist theoretically, e.g. horseshoe orbits around the point L4, L3 and L5. The denomination L is a reference to the Italian-born French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), who studied this problem.

The Lagrange points, in a reference frame rotating with Neptune.
The Lagrange points, in a reference frame rotating with Neptune.

At this time, 6,701 Trojans are known for Jupiter (4269 at L4 and 2432 at L5), 1 for Uranus, 1 for the Earth, 9 for Mars, and 17 for Neptune, 13 of them orbiting close to L4.

The Trojans of Neptune

You can find an updated list of them here, and let me gather their main orbital characteristics:

Location Eccentricity Inclination Magnitude
2004 UP10 L4 0.023 1.4° 8.8
2005 TO74 L4 0.052 5.3° 8.3
2001 QR322 L4 0.028 1.3° 7.9
2005 TN53 L4 0.064 25.0° 9.3
2006 RJ103 L4 0.031 8.2° 7.5
2007 VL305 L4 0.060 28.2° 7.9
2010 TS191 L4 0.043 6.6° 8.0
2010 TT191 L4 0.073 4.3° 7.8
2011 SO277 L4 0.015 9.6° 7.6
2011 WG157 L4 0.031 22.3° 7.1
2012 UV177 L4 0.071 20.9° 9.2
2014 QO441 L4 0.109 18.8° 8.3
2014 QP441 L4 0.063 19.4° 9.3
2004 KV18 L5 0.187 13.6° 8.9
2008 LC18 L5 0.079 27.5° 8.2
2011 HM102 L5 0.084 29.3° 8.1
2013 KY18 L5 0.121 6.6° 6.6

As you can see, these are faint bodies, which have been discovered between 2001 and 2014. I have given here their provisional designations, which have the advantage to contain the date of the discovery. Actually, 2004 UP10 is also known as (385571) Otrera, a mythological Queen of the Amazons, and 2005 TO74 has received the number (385695).

Their dynamics is plotted below:

Dynamics of the Trojans of Neptune, at the Lagrangian points L4 and L5 (squares).
Dynamics of the Trojans of Neptune, at the Lagrangian points L4 and L5 (squares).

Surprisingly, the 4 Trojans around L5 are outliers: they are the most two eccentric, the remaining two being among the three more inclined Trojans. Even if the number of known bodies may not be statistically relevant, this suggests an asymmetry between the two equilibriums L4 and L5. The literature has not made this point clear yet. In 2007, a study suggested an asymmetry of the location of the stable regions (here), but the same authors said one year later that this was indeed an artifact introduced by the initial conditions (here). In 2012, another study detected that the L4 zone is more stable than the L5 one. Still an open question… In the study I present today, the author simulated only orbits in the L4 region.

Binary asteroids

A binary object is actually two objects, which are gravitationally bound. When their masses ratio is of the order of 1, we should not picture it as a major body and a satellite, but as two bodies orbiting a common barycenter. At this time, 306 binary asteroids have been detected in the Solar System. Moreover, we also know 14 triple systems, and 1 sextuple one, which is the binary Pluto-Charon and its 4 minor satellites.

The formation of a binary can result from the disruption of an asteroid, for instance after an impact, or after fission triggered by a spin acceleration (relevant for Near-Earth Asteroids, which are accelerated by the YORP effect), or from the close encounter of two objects. The outcome is two objects, which orbit together in a few hours, and this system evolves… and then several things might happen. Basically, it either evolves to a synchronous spin-spin-orbit resonance, i.e. the two bodies having a synchronous rotation, which is also synchronous with their mutual orbit (examples: Pluto-Charon, the double asteroid (90) Antiope), or the two components finally split… There are also systems in which only one of the components rotates synchronously. Another possible end-state is a contact binary, i.e. the two components eventually touch together.

At this time, 4 binary asteroids are known among the Trojans asteroids of Jupiter. None is known for Neptune.

Numerical simulations

The author considered fictitious binary asteroids close to the L4 of Neptune, and propagated the motion of the two components, in considering the planetary perturbations of the planets, over 4.5 Byr, i.e. the age of the Solar System. A difficulty for such long-term numerical studies is the handling of numerical uncertainties. Your numerical scheme includes a time-step, which is the time interval between the simulated positions of the system, i.e. the locations and velocities of the two components of the binary. If your time-step is too large, you will have a mathematical uncertainty in your evaluation. However, if you shorten it, you will have too many iterations, which means a too long calculation time, and the accumulations of round-off errors due to the machine epsilon, i.e. rounding in floating point arithmetic.
A good time step should be a fraction of the shortest period perturbing the system. Neptune orbits the Sun in 165 years, which permits a time step of some years, BUT the period of a binary is typically a few hours… which is too short for simulations over the age of the Solar System. This problem is by-passed in averaging the dynamics of the binary. This means that only long-term effects are kept. In this case, the author focused on the Kozai-Lidov effect, which is a secular (i.e. very long-term) raise of the inclination and the eccentricity. Averaging a problem of gravitational dynamics is always a challenge, because you have to make sure you do not forget a significant contribution.
The author also included the tidal interaction between the two components, i.e. the mutual interaction triggering stress and strain, and which result in dissipation of energy, secular variation of the mutual orbits, and damping of the rotation.
He considered three sets of binaries: two with components of about the same size, these two samples differing by the intensity of tides, and in the third one the binary are systems with a high mass ratio, i.e. consisting of a central body and a satellite.

Survival of the binaries

The authors find that for systems with strong tides, about two thirds of the binaries should survive. The tides have unsurprisingly a critical role, since they tend to make the binary evolve to a stable end-state, i.e. doubly synchronous with an almost circular mutual orbit. However, few systems with main body + satellite survive.

Challenging this model

At this time, no binary has been found among the Trojans of Neptune, but this does not mean that there is none. The next years shall tell us more about these bodies, and once they will be statistically significant, we would be able to compare the observations with the theory. An absence of binaries could mean that they were initially almost absent, i.e. lack of binaries in that region (then we should explain why there are binaries in the Trans-Neptunian population), or that the relevant tides are weak. We could also expect further theoretical studies, i.e. with a more complete tidal dynamics, and frequency-dependent tides. Here, the author assumed a constant tidal function Q, while it actually depends on the rotation rate of the two bodies, which themselves decrease all along the evolution.

So, this is a model assisting our comprehension of the dynamics of binary objects in that region. As such, it should be seen as a step forward. Many other steps are to be expected in the future, observationally and theoretically (by the way, could a Trojan have rings?).

The study and its author

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Asteroids: Main Belt, Comets

Breaking an asteroid

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Hi there! Asteroids, these small bodies in the Solar System, are fascinating by the diversity of their shapes. This is a consequence of their small sizes. Another consequence is their weakness, which itself helps to split some of them into different parts, sometimes creating binary objects, asteroids families… The study I present you today, Internal gravity, self-energy, and disruption of comets and asteroids, by Anthony R. Dobrovolskis and Donald G. Korycansky, proposes an accurate computation of the required energy to provoke this break-up, at any place of the asteroid, i.e. you are more efficient when you hit at a given location. This study has recently been accepted for publication in Icarus.

Outline

Shapes of asteroids
The energies involved
Kleopatra and Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Numerical modeling
Results
The study and its authors

Shapes of asteroids

Please allow me, in this context, to call asteroid a comet, a comet being a small body, i.e. like an asteroid, but with a cometary activity. The important thing is that the involved bodies are small enough.

Beyond a given size, i.e. a diameter of ~400 km, a planetary body is roughly spheroidal, i.e. it is an ellipsoid with it two equatorial axes almost equal and the polar one smaller, because of its rotation. For a tidally despun body, like the Moon, or a satellite of a giant planet, the shape is more triaxial, since the tidal (gravitational) action of the parent planet tends to elongate the equatorial plane. The same phenomenon affects Mercury.

However, for smaller bodies, the self-gravitation is not strong enough to make the body look more or less like a sphere. As a consequence, you can have almost any shape, some bodies are bilobate, some are contact binaries, i.e. two bodies which permanently touch together, some others are rubble piles, i.e. are weak aggregates of rocks, with many voids.

These configurations make these bodies likely to undergo or have undergone break-up. This can be quantified by the required energy to extract some material from the asteroid.

The energies involved

For that, an energy budget must be performed. The relevant energies to consider are:

  • The impact disruption energy: the minimum kinetic energy of an impactor, to shatter the asteroid and remove at least half of its mass,
  • The shattering energy: the minimum energy needed to shatter the asteroid into many small pieces. It is part of the impact disruption energy. This energy is roughly proportional to the mass of the asteroid. It represents the cohesion between the adjacent pieces.
  • The binding energy: this energy binds the pieces constituting the asteroid. In other words, once you have broken an asteroid (don’t try this at home!), you have to make sure the pieces will not re-aggregate… because of the binding energy. For that, you have to bring enough energy to disperse the fragments.
  • The self-gravitational energy: due to the mutual gravitational interaction between the blocks constituting the asteroids. Bodies smaller than 1 km are strength-dominated, i.e. they exist thanks to the cohesion between the blocks, which is the shatter energy. However, larger bodies are gravity-dominated.
  • The kinetic energy of rotation: the spin of these bodies tends to enlarge the equatorial section. In that sense, it assists the break-up process.

This study addresses bodies, which are far enough from the Sun. This is the reason why I do not mention its influences, i.e. the tides and the thermic effects, which could be relevant for Near-Earth Objects. In particular, the YORP effect is responsible for the fission of some of them. I do not mention the orbital kinetic energy of the asteroid either. Actually the orbital motion is part of the input energy brought by an impact, since the relative velocity of the impactor with respect to the target is relevant in this calculation.

I now focus on the two cases studied by the authors to illustrate their theory: the asteroid Kleopatra and the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

2 peculiar cases: Kleopatra and Churyumov-Gerasimenko

216 Kleopatra is a Main-Belt asteroid. Adaptive optics observations have shown that is is constituted of two masses bound by material, giving a ham-bone shaped. As such, it can be considered as a contact binary. It is probably a rubble pile. Interestingly, observations have also shown that Kleopatra has 2 small satellites, Alexhelios and Cleoselene, which were discovered in 2008.

Reconstruction of the shape of Kleopatra. © NASA
Reconstruction of the shape of Kleopatra. © NASA

However, 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko is a Jupiter-family comet, i.e. its aphelion is close to the orbit of Jupiter, while its perihelion is close to the one of the Earth. It has an orbital period of 6.45 years, and was the target of the Rosetta mission, which consisted of an orbiter and a lander, Philae. Rosetta orbited Churyumov-Gerasimenko between 2014 and 2016. The shape of this comet is sometimes described as rubber ducky, with two dominant masses, a torso and a head, bound together by some material, i.e. a neck.

Churyumov-Gerasimenko seen by Rosetta. © ESA
Churyumov-Gerasimenko seen by Rosetta. © ESA
216 Kleopatra 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Semimajor axis 2.794 AU 3.465 AU
Eccentricity 0.251 0.641
Inclination 13.11° 7.04°
Spin period 5.385 h 12.761 h
Mean radius 62 km 2.2 km
Magnitude 7.30 11.30
Discovery 1880 1969

The irregular shapes of these two bodies make them interesting targets for a study addressing the gravitation of any object. Let us see now how the authors addressed the problem.

Numerical modeling

Several models exist in the literature to address the gravity field of planetary bodies. The first approximation is to consider them as spheres, then you can refine in seeing them as triaxial ellipsoids. For highly irregular bodies you can try to model them as cuboids, and then as polyhedrons. Another way is to see them as duplexes, this allows to consider the inhomogeneities dues to the two masses constituting bilobate objects. The existence of previous studies allow a validation of the model proposed by the authors.

And their model is a finite-element numerical modeling. The idea is to split the surface of the asteroid into small triangular planar facets, which should be very close to the actual surface. The model is all the more accurate with many small facets, but this has the drawback of a longer computation time. The facets delimit the volume over which the equations are integrated, these equations giving the local self-gravitational and the impact disruption energies. The authors also introduce the energy rebate, which is a residual energy, due to the fact that you can remove material without removing half of it. This means that the impact disruption energy, as it is defined in the literature, is probably a too strong condition to have extrusion of material.
The useful physical quantities, which are the gravitational potential, the attraction, and the surface slope, are propagated all along the body thanks to a numerical scheme, which accuracy is characterized by an order. This order quantifies the numerical approximation which is made at each integration step. A higher order is more accurate, but is computationally more expensive.

Once the code has been run on test cases, the authors applied it on Kleopatra and Churyumov-Gerasimenko, for which the shape is pretty well known. They used meshes of 4,094 and 5,786 faces, respectively.

Results

The validation phase is successful. The authors show that with a 3rd order numerical scheme, they recover the results present in the literature for the test cases with an accuracy of ~0.1%, which is much better than the accuracy of the shape models for the real asteroids. Regarding Kleopatra and Churyumov-Gerasimenko, they get the gravity field at any location, showing in particular excesses of gravity at the two lobes.

Such a study is particularly interesting for further missions, which would determine the gravity field of asteroids, which would then be compared with the theoretical determination by this code. Other applications are envisaged, the authors mentioning asteroid mining.

The study and its authors

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

And Merry Christmas!

Dwarf planets

The chemistry of Pluto

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Hi there! The famous dwarf planet Pluto is better known to us since the flyby of the spacecraft New Horizons in 2015. Today, I tell you about its chemistry. I present you Solid-phase equilibria on Pluto’s surface, by Sugata P. Tan & Jeffrey S. Kargel, which has recently been accepted for publication in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Outline

The atmosphere of Pluto
The surface of Pluto
An Equation Of State
Results
The study and its authors

The atmosphere of Pluto

I do not want here to recall everything about Pluto. This is a dwarf planet, which has been discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. It orbits most of the time outside the orbit of Neptune, but with such an eccentricity that it is sometimes inside. It was discovered in 1978 that Pluto has a large satellite, Charon, so large that the system Pluto-Charon can be seen as a binary object. This binary has at least 4 small satellites, which were discovered thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Pluto has a tenuous atmosphere. It was discovered from the Earth in 1985 in analyzing a stellar occultation: when a faint, atmosphereless object is aligned between a star and a observer, the observer does not see the star anymore. However, when the object has an atmosphere, the light emitted by the star is deviated, and can even be focused by the atmosphere, resulting in a peak of luminosity.

Several occultations have permitted to constrain the atmosphere. It has been calculated that its pressure is about 15 μbar (the one of the Earth being close to 1 bar, so it is very tenuous), and that it endured seasonal variations. By seasonal I mean the same as for the Earth: because of the variations of the Sun-Pluto distance and the obliquity of Pluto, which induces that every surface area has a time-dependent insolation, thermic effects affect the atmosphere. This can be direct effects, i.e. the Sun heats the atmosphere, but also indirect ones, in which the Sun heats the surface, triggering ice sublimation, which itself feeds the atmosphere. The seasonal cycle, i.e. the plutonian (or hadean) year lasts 248 years.

Observations have shown that this atmosphere is hotter at its top than at the surface, i.e. the temperature goes down from 110 K to about 45 K (very cold anyway). This atmosphere is mainly composed of nitrogen N2, methane CH4, and carbon monoxide CO.

The surface of Pluto

The surface is known to us thanks to New Horizons. Let me particularly focus on two regions:

  • Sputnik Planitia: this is the heart that can be seen on a map of Pluto. It is directed to Charon, and is covered by volatile ice, essentially made of nitrogen N2,
  • Cthulhu Regio: a large, dark reddish macula, on which the volatile ice is absent.
A map of Pluto (mosaic made with New Horizons data). © NASA
A map of Pluto (mosaic made with New Horizons data). © NASA

The reason why I particularly focus on these two regions is that they have two different albedos, i.e. the bright Sputnik Planitia is very efficient to reflect the incident Solar light, while Cthulhu Regio is much less efficient. This also affects the temperature: on Sputnik Planitia, the temperature never rises above 37 K, while it never goes below 42.5 K in Cthulhu Regio. We will see below that it affects the composition of the surface.

An Equation Of State

The three main components, i.e. nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide, have different sublimation temperatures at 11μbar, which are 36.9 K, 53 K, and 40.8 K, respectively (sublimation: direct transition from the solid to the gaseous state. No liquid phase.). A mixture of them will then be a coexistence of solid and gaseous phases, which depends on the temperature, the pressure, and the respective abundances of these 3 chemical components. The pressure is set to 11μbar, since it was the pressure measured by New Horizons, but several temperatures should be considered, since it is not homogeneous. The authors considered temperatures between 36.5 K and 41.5 K. Since the atmosphere has seasonal variations, a pressure of 11μbar should be considered as a snapshot at the closest encounter with New Horizons (July 14, 2015), but not as a mean value.

The goal of the authors is to build an Equation Of State giving the phases of a given mixture, under conditions of temperature and pressure relevant for Pluto. The surface is thus seen as a multicomponent solid solution. For that, they develop a model, CRYOCHEM for CRYOgenic CHEMistry, which aims at predicting the phase equilibrium under cryogenic conditions. The paper I present you today is part of this development. Any system is supposed to evolve to a minimum of energy, which is an equilibrium, and the composition of the surface of Pluto is assumed to be in thermodynamic equilibrium with the atmosphere. The energy which should be minimized, i.e. the Helmholtz energy, is related to the interactions between the molecules. A hard-sphere model is considered, i.e. a minimal distance between two adjacent particles should be maintained, and for that the geometry of the crystalline structure is considered. Finally, the results are compared with the observations by New Horizons.

Such a model requires many parameters. Not only the pressure and temperature, but also the relative fraction of the 3 components, and the parameters related to the energies involved. These parameters are deduced from extrapolations of lab experiments.

Results

The predicted coexistence of states predicted by this study is consistent with the observations. Moreover, it shows that the small fraction of carbon monoxide can be neglected, as the behavior of the ternary mixture of N2/CH4/CO is very close to the one of the binary N2/CH4. This results in either a nitrogren-rich solid phase, for the coolest regions (the bright Sputnik Planitia, e.g.), and a methane-rich solid phase for the warmest ones, like Cthulhu Regio.

Developing such a model has broad implications for predicting the composition of bodies’s surfaces, for which we lack of data. The authors give the example of the satellite of Neptune Triton, which size and distance to the Sun present some similarities with Pluto. They also invite the reader to stay tuned, as an application of CRYOCHEM to Titan, which is anyway very different from Pluto, is expected for publication pretty soon.

The study and its authors

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Satellites of Jupiter

Resurfacing Ganymede

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Hi there! After Europa last week, I tell you today on the next Galilean satellite, which is Ganymede. It is the largest planetary satellite in the Solar System, and it presents an interesting surface, i.e. with different terrains showing evidence of past activity. This is the opportunity for me to present you Viscous relaxation as a prerequisite for tectonic resurfacing on Ganymede: Insights from numerical models of lithospheric extension, by Michael T. Bland and William B. McKinnon. This study has recently been accepted for publication in Icarus.

Outline

The satellite Ganymede
Resurfacing a terrain
Numerical simulations
A new scenario of resurfacing
In the future
The study and its authors

The satellite Ganymede

Ganymede is the third, by its distance to the planet, of the 4 Galilean satellites of Jupiter. It was discovered with the 3 other ones in January 1610 by Galileo Galilei. These are indeed large bodies, which means that they could host planetary activity. Io is known for its volcanoes, and Europa and Ganymede (maybe Callisto as well) are thought to harbour a global, subsurfacic ocean. The table below lists their size and orbital properties, which you can compare with the 5th satellite, Amalthea.

Semimajor axis Eccentricity Inclination Radius
J-1 Io 5.90 Rj 0.0041 0.036° 1821.6 km
J-2 Europa 9.39 Rj 0.0094 0.466° 1560.8 km
J-3 Ganymede 14.97 Rj 0.0013 0.177° 2631.2 km
J-4 Callisto 26.33 Rj 0.0074 0.192° 2410.3 km
J-5 Amalthea 2.54 Rj 0.0032 0.380° 83.45 km

We have images of the surface of Ganymede thanks to the spacecraft Voyager 1 & 2, and Galileo. These missions have revealed different types of terrains, darker and bright, some impacted, some pretty smooth, some showing grooves… “pretty smooth” should be taken with care, since the feeling of smoothness depends on the resolution of the images, which itself depends on the distance between the spacecraft and the surface, when this specific surface element was directed to the spacecraft.

Dark terrain in Galileo Regio. © NASA
Dark terrain in Galileo Regio. © NASA
Bright terrain with grooves and a crater. © NASA
Bright terrain with grooves and a crater. © NASA

A good way to date a terrain is to count the craters. It appears that the dark terrains are probably older than the bright ones, which means that a process renewed the surface. The question this paper addresses is: which one(s)?

Marius Regio and Nippur Sulcus. © NASA
Marius Regio and Nippur Sulcus. © NASA

Resurfacing a terrain

These four mechanisms permit to renew a terrain from inside:

  • Band formation: The lithosphere, i.e. the surface, is fractured, and material from inside takes its place. This phenomenon is widely present on Europa, and probably exists on Ganymede.
  • Viscoelastic relaxation: When the crust has some elasticity, it naturally smooths. As a consequence, craters tend to disappear. Of course, this phenomenon is a long-term process. It requires the material to be hot enough.
  • Cryovolcanism: It is like volcanism, but with the difference that the ejected material is mainly composed of water, instead of molten rock. Part of the ejected material falls on the surface.
  • Tectonics: Extensional of compressional deformations of the lithosphere. This is the phenomenon, which is studied here.

Beside these processes, I did not mention the impacts on the surface, and the erosion, which is expected to be negligible on Ganymede.

The question the authors addressed is: could tectonic resurfacing be responsible for some of the actually observed terrains on Ganymede?

Numerical simulations

To answer this question, the authors used the numerical tool, more precisely the 2-D code Tekton. 2-D means that the deformations below the surface are not explicitly simulated. Tekton is a viscoelastic-plastic finite element code, which means that the surface is divided into small areas (finite elements), and their locations are simulated with respect to the time, under the influence of a deforming cause, here an extensional deformation.

The authors used two kinds of data, that we would call initial conditions for numerical simulations: simulated terrains, and real ones.
The simulated terrains are fictitious topographies, varying by the amplitude and frequency of deformation. The deformations are seen as waves, the wavelength being the distance between two peaks. A smooth terrain can be described by long-wavelength topography, while a rough one will have short wavelength.
The real terrains are Digital Terrain Models, extracted from spacecraft data.

The authors also considered different properties of the material, like the elasticity, or the cohesion.

A new scenario of resurfacing

It results from the simulations that the authors can reproduce smooth terrains with grooves, starting from already smooth terrains without grooves. However, extensional tectonics alone cannot remove the craters. In other words, if you can identify craters at the surface of Ganymede, after millions of years of extensional tectonics you will still observe them. To make smooth terrains, you need the assistance of another process, the viscoelastic relaxation of the lithosphere being an interesting candidate.

This pushed the authors to elaborate a new scenario of resurfacing of Ganymede, involving different processes.
They consider that the dark terrains are actually the eldest ones, having remaining intact. However, there was indeed tectonic resurfacism of the bright terrains, which formed grooved. But the deformation of the lithosphere was accompanied by an elevation of the temperature (which is not simulated by Tekton), which itself made the terrain more elastic. This elasticity itself relaxed the craters.

Anyway, you need elasticity (viscoelasticity is actually more accurate, since you have energy dissipation), and for that you need an elevation of the local temperature. This may have been assisted by heating due to internal processes.

In the future

Ganymede is the main target of the ESA mission JUICE, which should orbit it 2030. We expect a big step in our knowledge of Ganymede. For this specific problem, we will have a much better resolution of the whole surface, the gravity field of the body (which is related to the interior), maybe a magnetic field, which would constrain the subsurface ocean and the depth of the crust enshrouding it, and the Love number, which indicates the deformation of the gravity field by the tidal excitation of Jupiter. This last quantity contains information on the interior, but it is related to the whole body, not specifically to the structure. I doubt that we would have an accurate knowledge of the viscoelasticity of the crust. Moreover, the material properties which created the current terrains may be not the current ones; in particular the temperature of Ganymede is likely to have varied over the ages. We know for example that this temperature is partly due to the decay of radiogenic elements shortly after the formation of the satellite. During this heating, the satellite stratifies, which alters the tidal response to the gravitational excitation of Jupiter, and which itself heats the satellite. This tidal response is also affected by the obliquity of Ganymede, by its eccentricity, which is now damped… So, the temperature is neither constant, nor homogeneous. There will still be room for theoretical studies and new models.

The study and its authors

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