Zoom link

Abstract:
When Galileo first viewed faint points of light that changed their positions relative to Jupiter from one night to the next, he inferred that those points were four moons orbiting the planet. Little more was known about the moons until the space age, but since the 1970s, multiple spacecraft have visited the Jovian system and the moons have slowly revealed interesting and diverse properties. There is good reason to believe that the moons, Europa and Ganymede, hide massive oceans beneath their icy outer layers. Is it possible that water is present in regions where life could establish itself? That question is of such interest that both the European Space Agency and NASA are sending spacecraft to Jupiter to find out more about the near-surface environments of these interesting bodies. The Juice spacecraft is already moving through the solar system on a very complex path that will bring it to Jupiter in 2031. The Europa Clipper spacecraft was launched on October 14, 2024 and is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2030. The talk will describe how some of the properties of the moons were established by measurements of the Galileo spacecraft and will describe the objectives and the planned measurements of the new missions.

Bio:
Margaret Kivelson is a Distinguished Professor of Space Physics, Emerita at the University of California, Los Angeles and a Research Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Kivelson’s research interests are in the areas of solar terrestrial physics and planetary science focusing on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Jupiter’s Galilean moons. She has extensive planetary mission experience, serving as the Principal Investigator for the magnetometer on the Galileo Orbiter, a Co-Investigator on the magnetometer of the earth-orbiting NASA-ESA Cluster mission, and a member of the Cassini magnetometer team. More recently, she has been a Co-Investigator on NASA’s Themis mission, Team Leader for the Europa Clipper Magnetometer, Co-I on the Europa Clipper Plasma Investigation, and a member of the magnetometer team for the European Juice mission to Jupiter. She has published about 400 research papers and co-edited a widely used textbook on space physics. In addition, she is a Fellow of the AAAS, the AGU, the APS, and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.