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Astypalaea Linea is an 810-km strike-slip fault, located near the south pole of Europa. In length, it rivals the San Andreas Fault in California, and it is the largest strike-slip fault yet known on Europa. The fault was discovered using Voyager 2 images, based upon the presence of familiar strike-slip features including linearity, pull-aparts, and possible braids, and upon the offset of multiple...
Tidal torques on Europa due to Jupiter would tend to drive Europa's rotation to a rate slightly faster than synchronous, unless synchroneity is maintained by a permanent asymmetry in Europa's mass distribution. Moreover, global fracture patterns on Europa's surface, as well as the complex fine-scale tectonics revealed by Galileo high-resolution imagery, may be evidence of stress due to nonsynchronous...
Europa's orbital eccentricity, driven by the resonance with Io and Ganymede, results in “diurnal” tides (3.5-day period) and possibly in nonsynchronous rotation. Both diurnal variation and nonsynchronous rotation can create significant stress fields on Europa's surface, and both effects may produce cracking. Patterns and time sequences of apparent tectonic features on Europa include lineaments that...
The Galileo mission has returned the first high-resolution (21 m/pixel) images of the surface of Europa. These images reveal structures with morphologies reminiscent of those seen on terrestrial sea ice. Although it is premature to make one-to-one analogies between sea ice and Europa's surface, a review of the types of surface features commonly formed on Earth and of various sea-ice processes can...
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