Characterizing the internal oceans of Jupiter’s icy moons with ESA’s JUICE and NASA’s Europa Clipper missions

Magnetometric measurements carried out by the Galileo mission (1996-2003) revealed that Jupiter's three large icy moons (Europa, Ganymede, Callisto) likely harbor a subsurface salty ocean underneath their cold icy surface. However, the depth and composition of these internal oceans still remains poorly constrained. ESA's JUICE and NASA's Europa Clipper missions are currently en route to Jupiter with the primary objective to characterize these subsurface oceans and assess their habitability potential. Both spacecrafts are equipped by a complementary suite of geophysical, remote sensing and in situ instruments which will provide unique data of unprecedented accuracy on the moons' interior, surface, exosphere and interaction with Jupiter's environment. In this seminar, after reviewing the current knowledge on these ice-covered ocean worlds, I present how synergies between the different instruments on both spacecrafts, supported by numerical modeling and experimental data, will allow us to determine the structure, dynamics and composition of these oceans, essential for assessing the astrobiological potential of these oceanic environments.