How Earth Studies Guide the Search for Habitability on Icy Worlds

Icy moons in the outer solar system, like Europa and Enceladus, appear to host potentially habitable subsurface liquid water oceans beneath kilometers of ice. Missions to these icy satellites, like Europa Clipper, will study Europa’s surface and near-surface ice structures using remote sensing techniques, including radar, to infer geological processes happening in the interior. Mission concepts like Enceladus Orbilander propose to sample plumes erupting at Enceladus for potential biosignatures. This talk will focus on how analog studies on Earth can inform the interpretation of data from missions to ocean worlds. It will highlight a ground-penetrating radar investigation in the Arctic with implications for Europa Clipper and lab work using a Cryovolcanism Simulator with implications for Enceladus Orbilander.