DIX Planetary Science Seminar

The outer Solar System hosts many bodies that contain substantial amounts of water. Whether this water can remain liquid on a global scale, forming a subsurface ocean, has been a major scientific question for decades, driven by the potential habitability such oceans might offer. Measurements from the Galileo and Cassini missions confirmed the existence of oceans at several moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and models suggest they may persist inside Uranus' moons. The coming decades provide new opportunities for observational tests with data from Europa Clipper and Juice in the Jupiter system, Dragonfly at Titan, and the anticipated Uranus Orbiter and Probe. I will review the techniques used or proposed to detect oceans in icy moons using spacecraft measurements. I will also present recent work that challenges the long-standing interpretation that Titan hosts a global ocean, based on improved gravity measurements and a reassessment of supporting observations. This finding has implications for Callisto and Ganymede, where confirmation of oceans will require combining data from multiple investigations from Europa Clipper and Juice. Finally, I will discuss recent formulation efforts for the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, highlighting a strategy to reveal oceans inside Uranus' major moons under strict design and operational constraints.