TY - JOUR
T1 - Enceladus's ice shell structure as a window on internal heat production
AU - Hemingway, Douglas J.
AU - Mittal, Tushar
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded primarily by the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and was made possible by the NASA/ESA Cassini mission to Saturn and, in particular, the work of the Radio Science and Imaging Science Subsystem teams. We thank Francis Nimmo, Ondřej Čadek, and Anton Ermakov for their thorough and constructive reviews. This work also benefited from discussions with Michael Beuthe, Bruce Buffett, Michael Manga, Bill McKinnon, Naor Movshovitz, Radwan Tajeddine, and Gabriel Tobie. We thank Daniele Durante and Luciano Iess for supplying the covariance matrix corresponding to the estimated gravitational potential coefficients. All other data are publicly available in the published literature.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2019/11/1
Y1 - 2019/11/1
N2 - Its extraordinary level of geologic activity, its potential for habitability, and the prospects of returning samples from its plume of erupting water ice make Saturn's small (∼500 km diameter) moon Enceladus a high priority target for future exploration and a key to our developing understanding of icy ocean worlds. The structure of its outer ice shell is particularly important as it relates to the global heat budget, the global-scale response to tidal forces, and the nature of the ongoing eruptions. It is also diagnostic of how and where heat is dissipated internally. Here, using the most recent shape model and a new approach to modeling isostasy, we obtain a shell structure that simultaneously accommodates the shape, gravity, and libration observations and suggests that tidal dissipation near the base of the ice shell is likely an important mode of internal heating. The implied conductive heat loss is greater than the heat loss associated with the eruptions but is nevertheless compatible with the condition of steady state.
AB - Its extraordinary level of geologic activity, its potential for habitability, and the prospects of returning samples from its plume of erupting water ice make Saturn's small (∼500 km diameter) moon Enceladus a high priority target for future exploration and a key to our developing understanding of icy ocean worlds. The structure of its outer ice shell is particularly important as it relates to the global heat budget, the global-scale response to tidal forces, and the nature of the ongoing eruptions. It is also diagnostic of how and where heat is dissipated internally. Here, using the most recent shape model and a new approach to modeling isostasy, we obtain a shell structure that simultaneously accommodates the shape, gravity, and libration observations and suggests that tidal dissipation near the base of the ice shell is likely an important mode of internal heating. The implied conductive heat loss is greater than the heat loss associated with the eruptions but is nevertheless compatible with the condition of steady state.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.icarus.2019.03.011
DO - 10.1016/j.icarus.2019.03.011
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85068519303
SN - 0019-1035
VL - 332
SP - 111
EP - 131
JO - Icarus
JF - Icarus
ER -