HR: 0800h
AN: P31A-0972    [Abstracts]
TI: Impact Craters on Jupiter's Icy Moons as Astrobiological Targets
AU: * Bierhaus, E B
EM: edward.b.bierhaus@lmco.com
AF: Lockheed Martin, Mail Stop S8110 PO Box 179, Denver, CO 80201
AU: Lipps, J H
EM: jlipps@uclink.berkeley.edu
AF: University of California, Berkeley, Museum of Paleontology & Department of Integrative Biology University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720
AB: Impact craters are prime astrobiological targets on icy moons with possible subsurface oceans. Craters are natural probes to subsurface materials; hence may sequester biologic signatures such as whole organisms, fossils, biochemicals, biomarkers, and biotextures. Craters expose a stratigraphic record. The closer to the crater center, the more deep-seated is the excavated material. All craters provide samples of the crust in the walls, overturned ice, and ejecta. Larger craters excavate deep interior ice in the central peaks, which may arise at the interface between solid ice and liquid water. The largest craters possess concentric rings, and flat floors that may be frozen water from under the icy shell that might expose information about the water column. Craters immediately deliver sub-surface materials to the surface, in contrast to endogenic processes (e.g. Europa) that likely operate over days to thousands or more years. The slower endogenic processes allow any extant life proactively to migrate from their habitats to other marginal regions or to die and degrade. Craters also offer unique habitats. A sub-surface "lens" of melt remains beneath the crater floor for up to thousands of years after impact. Life could rapidly exploit and abandon these habitats as they form and disappear, so these sub-surface melt-lenses may serve as rich - albeit temporary - locales of biological activity or repositories for fossils as they freeze. Although Europa displays the best evidence for a global ocean of the three icy Galilean satellites, Ganymede and Callisto also may have liquid water beneath their icy crusts. Ganymede, at least, bears evidence of an extensive geological history, which may have provided energy and habitats for biological processes. Though briny oceans (if they exist) are deeper beneath the icy crusts on Ganymede and Callisto than on Europa, the investigative principle largely remains the same. However, excavation to the deeply buried water requires larger and less frequent, and thus generally older, impacts. The surfaces of the larger, older craters have been processed by subsequent impacts, sputtering, and/or tectonic activity, all of which mask clues to any excavated biological signatures.
DE: 5420 Impact phenomena (includes cratering)
DE: 5470 Surface materials and properties
DE: 6218 Jovian satellites
SC: Planetary Sciences [P]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting