Abstract: 

Locked beneath its icy crust, Jupiter’s moon Europa likely harbors one of the largest bodies of liquid water in the Solar System—a global, salty, internal ocean that may present a hospitable environment for life. Currently, investigations of the composition of Europa’s geologically young, fractured surface provide our best window into its ocean chemistry and, thus, its potential habitability. I will discuss how I have been using Earth-based spectroscopic observations from facilities like the Hubble Space Telescope, Keck Observatory, and JWST to improve our understanding of Europa’s surface chemistry and its relationship to the internal ocean. These observations complement the past and future spacecraft exploration of the Jupiter system and are revealing new avenues for up-close investigation by the upcoming Europa Clipper mission.

Bio: Dr. Samantha Trumbo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UC San Diego, where she combines observations from several ground- and space-based telescopes to study the mysteries of the diverse planetary satellites of the outer solar system. She is also a co-investigator of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which is currently en-route to the Jupiter system. Prior to joining UC San Diego, she was a 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University.  She holds a B.A. in Astronomy and Biology from Cornell University, an M.S. in Oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and a PhD in Planetary Science from Caltech.

Speaker-suggested reading:  Samantha K. Trumbo, Michael E. Brown, The distribution of CO2 on Europa indicates an internal source of carbon.Science381,1308-1311(2023).DOI:10.1126/science.adg4155