Marshall Styczinski

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Software Engineer at ChromoLogic

The magnetometer investigation of the Galileo mission used the phenomenon of magnetic induction to produce the most compelling evidence that subsurface oceans exist within our solar system. Although there is high certainty that the induced field measured at Europa is attributed to a global‐scale subsurface ocean, there is still uncertainty around t...

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 t...

The discovery of Europa’s subsurface ocean has spawned a strong desire by the planetary community to return and assess the ocean’s habitability using the magnetic induction signal that Europa generates. NASA has since formulated and developed the Europa Clipper mission with that same goal, anticipating its arrival in the Jovian system in the early...

Ice penetrating radar sounding is the primary geophysical technique for imaging the subsurface of planetary ice shells and has the potential to directly detect the ice–ocean interface. However, many sounding measurements may lack laterally extensive features that would aid their physical interpretation. In this scenario, the detection of sparse ech...

Spacecraft magnetic field measurements are able to tell us much about the planets' interior dynamics, composition, and evolutionary timeline. Magnetic fields also serve as the source for passive magnetic sounding of moons. Time‐varying magnetic fields experienced by the moons, due to relative planetary motion, interact electrically with conductive...

Seismology is a powerful tool for probing the deep interiors of planetary bodies. Just as deep moonquakes triggered by Earth’s tides occur on the Moon, as observed by the Apollo seismometers, icy moons of the giant planets may also have seismically active deep interiors, opening up future prospects for in situ seismic investigations at their surfac...

Investigating the habitability of ocean worlds is a priority of current and future NASA missions. The Europa Clipper mission will conduct approximately 50 flybys of Jupiter’s moon Europa, returning a detailed portrait of its interior from the synthesis of data from its instrument suite. The magnetometer on board has the capability of decoupling Eur...

Welcome to the wonderful world of AxiSEM3D, a flexible, high-performance computational method for solving the elastodynamic wave equation in three-dimensional, hetereogeneous media. It has been used in seismology for the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and many of other rocky planets and moons of the Solar System. In this manual, we will explore the prac...

The Astrobiology Primer 3.0 (ABP3.0) is a concise introduction to the field of astrobiology for students and others who are new to the field of astrobiology. It provides an entry into the broader materials in this supplementary issue of Astrobiology and an overview of the investigations and driving hypotheses that make up this interdisciplinary fie...

Although astrobiology is a relatively new field of science, the questions it seeks to answer (e.g., "What is life?" "What does life require?") have been investigated for millennia. In recent decades, formal programs dedicated specifically to the science of astrobiology have been organized at academic, governmental, and institutional scales. Constru...

All known life on Earth inhabits environments that maintain conditions between certain extremes of temperature, chemical composition, energy availability, and so on (Chapter 6). Life may have emerged in similar environments elsewhere in the Solar System and beyond. The ongoing search for life elsewhere mainly focuses on those environments most like...

Spacecraft magnetic field measurements are able to tell us much about the planets’ interior dynamics, composition, and evolutionary timeline. Magnetic fields also serve as the source for passive magnetic sounding of moons. Time-varying magnetic fields experienced by the moons, due to relative planetary motion, interact electrically with conductive...

The habitability of Europa is a property within a system, which is driven by a multitude of physical and chemical processes and is defined by many interdependent parameters, so that its full characterization requires collaborative investigation. To explore Europa as an example, integrated system to yield a complete picture of its habitability, the...

Robust thermodynamic data are essential for the development of geodynamic and geochemical models of ocean worlds. The water–ammonia system is of interest in the study of ocean worlds due to its purported abundance in the outer solar system, geological implications, and potential importance for origins of life. In support of developing new equations...

Several bodies in the outer solar system are believed to host liquid water oceans underneath their icy surfaces. Knowledge of the hydrosphere properties is essential for understanding and assessing their habitability. We introduce a methodology based on Bayesian inference that enables a robust characterization of the hydrosphere through the combina...

The Galileo mission to Jupiter revealed that Europa is an ocean world. The Galileo magnetometer experiment in particular provided strong evidence for a salty subsurface ocean beneath the ice shell, likely in contact with the rocky core. Within the ice shell and ocean, a number of tectonic and geodynamic processes may operate today or have operated...

The open‐source PlanetProfile framework was developed to investigate the interior structure of icy moons based on collectively matching their observed properties and comparative planetology. The software relates observed and measured properties, assumptions such as the type of materials present, and laboratory equation‐of‐state (EOS) data through g...

Ganymede is the only moon in our solar system known to have a large-scale intrinsic magnetic field, likely generated in the moon’s metallic core. Initial analyses of Galileo spacecraft measurements concluded that Ganymede’s intrinsic magnetic field is dominated by a magnetic dipole and that quadrupolar contributions are exceptionally weak. These fi...

Described here is a concept for a variable-altitude aerobot mission to Venus developed as part of the 2020 NASA Planetary Science Summer School in collaboration with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Venus Air and Land Expedition: a Novel Trailblazer for in situ Exploration (VALENTInE) is a long-duration New Frontiers–class mission to Venus in al...

Magnetic investigations of icy moons have provided some of the most compelling evidence available confirming the presence of subsurface, liquid water oceans. In the exploration of ocean moons, especially Europa, there is a need for mathematical models capable of predicting the magnetic fields induced under a variety of conditions, including in the...

The Galileo mission to Jupiter discovered magnetic signatures associated with hidden subsurface oceans at the moons Europa and Callisto using the phenomenon of magnetic induction. These induced magnetic fields originate from electrically conductive layers within the moons and are driven by Jupiter's strong time‐varying magnetic field. The ice giant...

Magnetic investigations of icy moons have provided some of the most compelling evidence available confirming the presence of subsurface, liquid water oceans. In the exploration of ocean moons, especially Europa, there is a need for mathematical models capable of predicting the magnetic fields induced under a variety of conditions, including in the...

Extended planetary missions demonstrate tremendous science value. The return in science productivity more than justifies the small expense of extending functioning missionsrelative to developing and launching a new mission. We recommend that the Decadal Survey explicitly high-light the value of extended missions to the planetary community andto the...

The Galileo mission to Jupiter discovered magnetic signatures associated with hidden sub-surface oceans at the moons Europa and Callisto using the phenomenon of magnetic induction. These induced magnetic fields originate from electrically conductive layers within the moons and are driven by Jupiter's strong time-varying magnetic field. The ice gian...

Prior analyses of oceanic magnetic induction within Jupiter's large icy moons have assumed uniform electrical conductivity. However, the phase and amplitude responses of the induced fields will be influenced by the natural depth‐dependence of the electrical conductivity. Here, we examine the amplitudes and phase delays for magnetic diffusion in mod...

The five largest planets all have strong intrinsic magnetic fields that interact with their satellites, many of which contain electrically conducting materials on global scales. Conducting bodies exposed to time-varying magnetic fields induce secondary magnetic fields from movement of eddy currents. In the case of spherically symmetric conducting b...

We report the development of a laboratory-based Rowland-circle monochromator that incorporates a low power x-ray (bremsstrahlung) tube source, a spherically bent crystal analyzer, and an energy-resolving solid-state detector. This relatively inexpensive, introductory level instrument achieves 1-eV energy resolution for photon energies of ∼5 keV to...