Schumann Resonances as a tool to constrain the depth of Titan's buried water ocean: Re-assessment of Huygens observations and preparation of the EFIELD/Dragonfly experiment

TL;DR

This study re-evaluates past measurements of Schumann Resonances on Titan to constrain the moon's water ocean depth and assesses the potential of future EFIELD measurements from the Dragonfly mission.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical and surrogate model for Titan's electromagnetic cavity to re-assess previous data and predict the capabilities of upcoming measurements.

Findings

PWA/Huygens data do not constrain ocean depth due to low spectral resolution.

EFIELD experiment's higher resolution can better constrain Titan's internal structure.

Finer spectral data from EFIELD may improve understanding of Titan's subsurface properties.

Abstract

Among the lines of evidence for a buried ocean on Titan is the possible detection, in 2005, by the Permittivity, Wave and Altimetry (PWA) analyzer on board the ESA Huygens probe of Schumann-like Resonances (SR). SR are Extremely Low Frequency electromagnetic waves resonating between two electrically conductive layers. On Titan, it has been proposed that they propagate between the moon's ionosphere and a salty subsurface water ocean. Their characterization by electric field sensors can provide constraints on Titan's cavity characteristics and in particular on the depth of Titan's ocean which is key to better assess Titan's habitability. For this work we have developed a numerical model of Titan's electromagnetic cavity as well as a surrogate model to conduct simulations and sensitivity analyses at a low computational cost. This surrogate model is used both to re-assess PWA/Huygens measurements and to predict the future performance of the EFIELD experiment on board the NASA Dragonfly mission. We demonstrate that the PWA/Huygens measurements, in particular due to their low spectral resolution, do not bring any meaningful constraint on Titan's ocean depth. On the other hand, the finer resolution of the EFIELD experiment and its ability to capture several harmonics of SR should provide more robust constraints on Titan's internal structure, especially if the electrical properties of the ice crust and the atmosphere can be better constrained.