Constraining Europa's ice shell thickness with fundamental mode surface wave dispersion

Determining the thickness of Europa's outer ice shell is a key factor for understanding internal dynamics, evolution, and potential habitability. As such, one primary goals any future lander mission to Europa would be constrain confirm presence global subsurface ocean. Tidally induced fracturing events provide natural source seismic energy illuminate subsurface, thus instrument onboard could promising means probe thickness. A variety techniques used interior structure including body wave, surface normal mode seismology. Here, we use numerical simulations wave propagation on in order investigate using long period dispersion measurements Rayleigh flexural waves Since sensitivity kernels group velocity depend strongly shell, inverting non-linear problem. To address this, either grid search or Markov chain Monte Carlo inversion approach, test method plausible models interior. Additionally, demonstrate our approach “blind” 1 week synthetic catalogs seismicity from Panning et al. (2018). We find that under most scenarios, between periods 25–250 s can within several km uncertainty, although becomes increasingly inaccurate thicker shells at large epicentral distances. Our results, which suggest naturally occurring help determine thickness, may set requirements spaceflight capable seismometers aimed exploring icy ocean worlds. • Ice Europa’s are likely produce globally detected. constrained dispersion. Inversions possible without strong constraints distance events. Seismic instruments should component missions