LASP Science Seminars

The exploration of the Jovian system is entering a transformative era. Since 2016, NASA’s Juno mission has revolutionized our view of Jupiter’s atmosphere, magnetosphere, and deep interior, and is now extending its reach through close flybys of Ganymede, Europa, and Io, probing their radiation and charged particle environments. In parallel, ESA’s JUICE mission (launched in 2023) and NASA’s Europa Clipper (launched in 2024) will deliver an unprecedented characterization of the Galilean moons, Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa, focusing on the chemical and isotopic composition of their surfaces and exospheres. This wealth of forthcoming data offers a unique opportunity to constrain the formation and evolution of the Jovian system, provided it is interpreted within a robust physico-chemical framework. The central objective of this seminar is to establish quantitative links between the present-day volatile inventories observed at the surfaces and in the exospheres of the Galilean moons and their primordial formation conditions within the Jovian circumplanetary disk. Particular emphasis will be placed on identifying diagnostic chemical and isotopic tracers capable of distinguishing between competing formation scenarios. The seminar will also address the role of post-formation processes in shaping these signatures, including the evolution of subsurface oceans, exchanges between interiors, ice shells, and exospheres, and interactions with Jupiter’s magnetospheric environment. By tracing the origin, redistribution, and long-term fate of volatiles, this work aims to provide a coherent framework for interpreting upcoming mission data and to highlight the broader implications for the evolution of satellite systems and volatile reservoirs across planetary systems.