Predictive modeling of gravitational anomalies for geological features along Europa's seafloor, utilizing line-of-sight Doppler residuals

Exploring Europa, one of Jupiter's icy moons, is crucial for advancing our understanding of extraterrestrial geology and potential habitability. At present, study of gravity anomalies represents the best way to interrogate Europa's seafloor; however, current and expected global gravity models are insufficient for detecting and characterizing specific geologic features due to their coarse resolution. This study aims to determine whether Line-of-Sight (LoS) gravity signatures derived from Doppler residuals can be used to identify specific geological features on Europa's seafloor, such as mountain ranges, valleys, impact basins, rift zones, and subduction zones. Here, we assess the detectability of these features and evaluate whether the resolution from Europa Clipper would be sufficient to distinguish them. Our findings indicate that the expected LoS Doppler residual data likely will not provide sufficient resolution to differentiate between various geological formations on Europa's seafloor, primarily due to the spatial scale of the expected features compared to the spacecraft's distance from the surface. These limitations suggest that gravity signatures alone may not offer enough information for the interpretation of Europa's seafloor geology. • Expected Europa Clipper global gravity map will be too coarse for seafloor geology. • Higher resolution gravity data from Line-of-Sight residuals from tracking data. • Modeled Line-of-Sight gravity anomalies for putative Europa seafloor features. • Clipper Line-of-Sight gravity shows low feature contrast due to attenuation.