Preliminary study of extraterrestrial optical vibrometry for an impactor mission to Europa

We present a methodology to determine the thickness and material properties of the icy crust of Europa, a satellite of Jupiter. Instruments proposed for NASA’s Europa Multiple Flyby mission may be insufficient to adequately measure the ice’s thickness. We propose a complementary experiment in which vibration of the Europan surface is induced by an artificial impact. Optical vibrometry techniques, such as 2-D digital image correlation and vibration magnification are considered for detecting the displacement field at a sub-pixel level. We make use of COMSOL Multiphysics, which simulates wave motions via the finite element method. Dispersion curves of elastic waves and the wavenumber filtering are used to estimate the thickness and properties of the extraterrestrial ice.