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Improved determination of Europa's long-wavelength topography using stellar occultations
  • +4
  • Jacob Nunes Henriques Abrahams,
  • Francis Nimmo,
  • Tracy M Becker,
  • Randy Gladstone,
  • Kurt Retherford,
  • Gregor Benjamin Steinbrügge,
  • Erwan Mazarico
Jacob Nunes Henriques Abrahams
University of California, Santa Cruz, University of California, Santa Cruz

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Francis Nimmo
University of California, Santa Cruz, University of California, Santa Cruz
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Tracy M Becker
Southwest Research Institute, Southwest Research Institute
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Randy Gladstone
Southwest Research Institute, Southwest Research Institute
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Kurt Retherford
SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE, SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE
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Gregor Benjamin Steinbrügge
Stanford University, Stanford University
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Erwan Mazarico
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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Abstract

Europa Clipper will arrive at Jupiter at the end of this decade and will explore Europa through a series of flybys. One of its many goals is to characterize Europa’s topography and global shape using the EIS and REASON instruments. In addition, Europa Clipper’s UV Spectrograph will observe stars pass behind (be occulted by) Europa. The spectrograph has sufficiently precise timing, corresponding to a topographic precision of order meters, that these occultations can also serve as altimetric measurements. Because of gaps in the REASON radar altimeter coverage imposed by the flyby geometries, the addition of ~100 occultations results in a substantial improvement in the recovery of Europa’s long-wavelength shape. Typically five extra spherical harmonic degrees of topography can be recovered by combining occultations with radar altimetry.