Europa's geologically young surface has been modified by a myriad of geologic processes over at least the last 100 Myr (Bierhaus et al., 2009). Of the many resulting geologic features, the youngest appear low albedo and reddish in color, likely due to hydrated salts (e.g.,

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Several worlds in our solar system are thought to hold oceans of liquid water beneath their frozen surfaces. These subsurface ice and ocean environments are promising targets in the search for life beyond Earth, but they also present significant new technical challenges to planetary exploration. With a focus on Jupiter’s moon Europa, here we (1) identify major benefits and challenges to subsurface ocean world science, (2) provide a multidisciplinary survey of relevant sample handling and life detection technologies, and (3) integrate those perspectives into the Subsurface Science and Search for Life in Ocean Worlds (SSSLOW) concept payload. We discuss scientific goals across three complementary categories: (1) search for life, (2) assess habitability, and (3) investigate geological processes. Major mission challenges considered include submerged operation in high-pressure environments, the need to sample fluids with a range of possible chemical conditions, and detection of biosignatures at low concentrations. The SSSLOW addresses these issues by tightly integrated instrumentation and sample handling systems to enable sequential, complementary measurements while prioritizing preservation of sample context. In this work, we leverage techniques and technologies across several fields to demonstrate a path toward future subsurface exploration and life detection in ice and ocean worlds.

Titan is a chemically rich world that provides a natural laboratory for the study of the origin of life. Titan’s atmospherically derived C x H y N z molecules have been shown to form amino acids when mixed with liquid water, but the transition from prebiotic chemistry to the origin of life is not well understood. Investigating this prebiotic environment on Titan is one of the primary motivations behind NASA’s Dragonfly mission. One of its objectives is to visit the 80 km diameter Selk crater, where a melt sheet of liquid water would have formed during the impact cratering process. Organic molecules on Titan’s surface could have mixed with this water, forming molecules of prebiotic interest. Constraining how this material becomes trapped in the refreezing ice is necessary for Dragonfly to effectively target and interpret the samples it aims to acquire. In this work, we adapt the planetary ice model of Buffo et al. to Titan conditions to track how organic molecules will become trapped within the ice of the freezing melt sheet. We use HCN as a model impurity because of its abundance on Titan and its propensity to form amino acids in aqueous solutions. We show that without hydrolysis, HCN will be concentrated in the upper and middle portions of the resolidified melt sheet. In a closed system like Selk crater, the highest concentration of HCN appears 75% of the way into the frozen melt pond (relative to the surface), but HCN should be accessible at high concentrations nearer the surface as well.