Land- and marine-based ice systems provide Earth analogs for icy moons in general and Europa in particular. Europa contains a liquid water ocean beneath a global ice shell and above a silicate mantle, where coupled geological, glaciological, and oceanographic processes are considered conducive to initiating and sustaining life in environments analogous to extreme terrestrial habitats. Hypersaline, cold (below minus 11 degrees Celsius), subglacial lakes have been discovered beneath greater than 700 m of ice in the central region of the Devon Ice Cap, Canadian Arctic, deriving their salinity from underlying evaporite-rich sedimentary rocks. These briny subglacial bodies are intriguing habitats for life but present a significant challenge for current clean access drilling technology. The extensive layer of evaporite-rich sedimentary rocks extends beneath a good proportion of Devon Ice Cap resulting in a hypersaline subglacial hydrologic system. The hypersaline outflows from this system likely drain beneath marine- terminating outlet glaciers of the icecap in the north and south. These hypersaline outflows and the microbial communities they support present a particularly tantalizing Europa analog. Thus, the main objective of this research is to use Europa derived technologies to identify and characterize subglacial hypersaline outflows, both assessing the physical constraints on their habitability and validating platforms and instruments similar to those selected and anticipated for ocean world exploration. In particular, we will characterize the ice properties, subglacial hydrology, and geologic context of the Devon Ice Cap, and directly sample saline outflows beneath a marine terminating outlet glacier for geochemical and microbiological analyses.
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Sep 4, 2024
Blankenship, Donald; Beem, Lucas H.; Pierce, Christopher; Buhl, Dillon P.; Skidmore, Mark, 2024, "ESCHER ice thickness, echo strength and specularity content data for the Exploration of Saline Cryospheric Habitats with Europa Relevance project", https://doi.org/10.18738/T8/ZN15UF, Texas Data Repository, V1
ESCHER (Exploration of Saline Cryospheric Habitats with Europa Relevance) is a NASA funded PSTAR (Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research) program with the general geophysical goals of characterizing the subglacial environment of Devon Ice Cap in Nunavut, Canada as...
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