The Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) on the JUICE Mission

Abstract:

The Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) is one of the main instruments included in the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) ESA mission. It is a radar sounder designed for studying the subsurface geology and geophysics of Galilean icy moons (i.e., Ganymede, Europa and Callisto) and for detecting possible subsurface water. RIME is designed for penetration of the icy moons up to a depth of 9 km. Two main operation scenarios are foreseen for RIME: i) flyby observations of Europa, Ganymede and Callisto (from a distance of 1000 km to the closest approach of about 400 km); and ii) circular orbital observations around Ganymede at 500 km of altitude. According to these scenarios, RIME is designed to explore the icy shell of the Galilean icy satellites by characterizing the wide range of compositional, thermal, and structural variation found in the subsurface of these moons. RIME observations will profile the ice shells of the Galilean icy satellites with specific focus on Ganymede given the circular orbital phase. The acquired measures will provide geological context on hemispheric (thousands of km), regional (hundreds of km with multiple overlaps), and targeted (tens of km) scales appropriate for a variety of hypothesis tests.

RIME will operate in a single frequency band, centred at 9 MHz. The frequency was selected as the result of extensive study of penetration capabilities, surface roughness of the moons, Jovian radio noise, antenna accommodation, and system design. The 9 MHz frequency provides penetration capabilities and mitigation of surface scattering (which can cause signal loss and clutter issues), at the expense of mapping coverage, as it is likely to obtain high SNR observations only on the anti-Jovian side of the target moons. The RIME antenna is a 16 m dipole. The chirp pulse bandwidth is up to 3 MHz, which provides vertical resolution of about 50 m in ice after side lobe weighting. RIME will also operate with 1 MHz bandwidth to reduce data volume when observing deep sounding targets. This corresponds to a vertical resolution of about 140 m in ice. Within the high and low resolution modes, parameters can be adjusted to change the output data rate. RIME can downlink raw data for on-ground focusing or pre-processed data by a presuming operation for data rate reduction.