A key discovery from the past six decades of solar system exploration is that liquid water oceans may be a common planetary phenomenon. At least six ice-covered moons of the outer solar system present compelling evidence for subsurface oceans, and thus provide highly compelling targets in our search for life beyond Earth, and for the emerging field of comparative oceanography. In this talk I will briefly describe several lines of evidence for these oceans, and then detail some of the latest discoveries made about Jupiter’s moon Europa, with a focus on experiments conducted in my lab, and observations made with HST and JWST. I will also provide an overview of missions that will explore these worlds in the coming decades, and describe how exploration of Earth’s ocean and cryosphere is helping to guide our understanding of the potential habitability of these alien oceans.

Bio:
Dr. Kevin P. Hand is a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he founded and directs the Ocean Worlds Lab. His research focuses on the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the solar system with an emphasis on moons of the outer solar system that likely harbor liquid water oceans. He is the Principal Investigator for the SHERLOC instrument onboard the Mars Perseverance rover, and he was the pre-Project Scientist for NASA’s Europa Lander mission concept. Dr. Hand is a Co-Investigator on the Europa Clipper and Titan Dragonfly missions. From 2011-2016, Hand served as Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration at JPL. His fieldwork has brought him to Antarctica, the Arctic, the depths of Earth’s ocean, the glaciers of Africa, and the desert of Namibia. His book ‘Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space’, was published in 2020 by Princeton University Press.

* For the Zoom link please email Xueyao Cheng  > xc272@stanford.edu