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Partial differentiation of Europa and implications for the origin of materials in the Jupiter system

Nature Astronomy volume 9, pages 501–511 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Galileo mission measured the gravity field around Europa. The results indicated that the moon’s interior is mostly made of rock (~90 wt%). However, the level of differentiation of the deep interior is still poorly understood. We constrain the interior of Europa using Galileo gravity data and a combination of geophysical and geochemical models that connects the origin of the materials accreted in the Jupiter system with the observed gravity field. The results indicate that Europa is partially differentiated and that it probably formed primarily from CV chondrite material. We investigate this finding by coupling thermal evolution models with a detailed treatment of Fe–FeS melting. The metal–silicate differentiation temperatures (>1,600 K) are not attained if Europa formed about 4 Myr after the production of calcium aluminium inclusions. The leaching of potassium during thermal metamorphism further limits differentiation. Our results imply a cold evolution for Europa and suggest that part of water inventory of Europa was supplied by external sources, possibly by comets. These implications can be tested with the gravity data that will be acquired by Europa Clipper and JUICE.

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Fig. 1: Percentage of water mass relative to Europa’s mass derived from our inversion for each composition.
Fig. 2: Histograms of Europa’s core radius obtained by constraining the inversion with two different MoIs.
Fig. 3: Histograms for mantle density and core radius of Ganymede, obtained by constraining the inversion with different MoIs.
Fig. 4: Thermal evolution models of Europa assuming a MC-scale reference composition.

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Data availability

Input for the modelling and measurements are available in the published literature. The gravity measurements used in this study were retrieved from previous analyses of Galileo radio science data4,10. The mineralogical modelling and associated input are described in the Supplementary Information and in Melwani Daswani et al.17. The interior models produced in this work are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14193565 (ref. 59).

Code availability

Code relevant to the interior modelling and inversion used in this work is available upon request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We thank F. Nimmo (University of California Santa Cruz), C. Glein (Southwest Research Institute), O. Mousis (Aix-Marseille Université), H. Hussmann (DLR), R. Malhotra (University of Arizona) and the Europa Clipper Gravity/Radio Science investigation team for fruitful discussions and suggestions that substantially improved the manuscript. F.P. and A.G. acknowledge funding from the Italian Space Agency (Contract 2021-19-HH.0). M.M.D. was supported by NASA’s Habitable Worlds programme (Solicitation NNH18ZDA001N-HW, Proposal No. 18-HW18_2-0111). This work was partially supported by 22-PSIE22_2-0024 and by NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. Parts of this work were carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA (80NM0018D0004). M.J.S. was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities under a contract with NASA (80HQTR21CA005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Flavio Petricca, Julie C. Castillo-Rogez, Mohit Melwani Daswani, Corey J. Cochrane & Steven D. Vance

  2. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Flavio Petricca & Antonio Genova

  3. Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, Seattle, WA, USA

    Marshall J. Styczinski

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  1. Flavio Petricca
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Contributions

F.P., J.C.C.-R. and A.G. conceived the initial study. F.P. designed and performed the interior structure inversion and analysis. J.C.C.-R. contributed the thermal evolution modelling and analysis. M.M.D. provided the mineralogy and geochemical modelling. All authors contributed to the discussion and interpretation of the results. F.P. and J.C.C.-R. wrote the first draft of the paper. All authors contributed to the revisions of the paper.

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Correspondence to Flavio Petricca.

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Nature Astronomy thanks Stefano Bertone and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–11, Sections 1–6 and Table 1.

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Petricca, F., Castillo-Rogez, J.C., Genova, A. et al. Partial differentiation of Europa and implications for the origin of materials in the Jupiter system. Nat Astron 9, 501–511 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02469-4

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