Emission of energetic neutral atoms from water ice under Ganymede surface-like conditions

The co-rotating plasma around Jupiter precipitates on the surfaces of the jovian moons, where it is not hindered by a local magnetic field. Precipitating ions lead to the emission of energetic neutral atoms, which are produced via backscattering and sputtering processes, from the surface. The European Space Agency's JUICE mission to Jupiter carries as part of the Particle Environment Package experiment an imaging energetic neutral atom spectrometer called the jovian Neutrals Analyzer (JNA). When it is in orbit around Ganymede, JNA will measure the energetic neutral atom flux emitted from the surface of Ganymede in the energy range from 10 eV to 3300 eV. The surface of Ganymede consists of a large fraction of water ice. To characterize the expected energetic neutral atom fluxes from water ice due to precipitating jovian plasma, we impacted protons and singly charged oxygen ions with energies up to 33 keV on a salty water ice target kept at Ganymede surface conditions. Emitted energetic atoms were measured energy- and mass-resolved using the JNA prototype instrument. The data show high yields for energetic neutral atoms per incident ion in the JNA energy range. For incident protons, energetic neutral atom yields between 0.28 at 1 keV and ∼40 at 33 keV were observed. For incident singly charged oxygen ions, the observed energetic neutral atom yield ranged from 0.8 for at 3 keV to ∼170 at 23 keV.