Influence of Magnetic Field Line Draping on Charged Particle Irradiation of Europa’s Surface Ice

Europa, the smallest of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, orbits within its parent planet's inner magnetosphere. When the Galileo spacecraft visited Europa in the late 1990s, its magnetometer measured signatures consistent with a secondary magnetic field centered at the moon. It was found that such an induced field could only be generated by a highly-conducting, liquid water layer locked beneath the moon's icy crust.