Special issue announcement

Surface-Environment Interactions on Icy Moons of the Outer Solar System
Submission deadline: September 1, 2026
Organizers: Guillaume Cruz-Mermy (ESA/ESAC), Rozenn Robidel (ESA/ESAC)

The exploration of icy moons in the outer solar system has entered a transformative era, driven by major upcoming missions such as ESA’s JUICE and NASA’s Europa Clipper and Dragonfly, complemented by the scientific legacy of Cassini at Saturn and future missions targeting Enceladus. Together, these efforts promise unprecedented insights into the surface, exospheric, and magnetospheric environments of icy moons, advancing our understanding of their habitability, geophysical processes, and astrobiological potential. Despite this progress, significant gaps remain in our ability to connect surface processes with their surrounding plasma, radiation and neutral environments, and to assess how these coupled interactions shape ocean worlds over multiple spatial and temporal scales.

To address these challenges, the “Jovian Icy Moons: Surface–Environment Interactions” workshop was held at ESAC in November 2025, bringing together researchers studying surface, exospheric, and magnetospheric processes on icy moons. The workshop fostered interdisciplinary exchange and highlighted recent advances from remote sensing, laboratory experiments and numerical modeling. Building on this momentum, this Special Issue aims to synthesize recent progress and expand the discussion to both Jovian and Saturnian systems. We invite contributions addressing surface chemistry and alteration, exospheric and plume dynamics, radiation-driven processes, laboratory and analogue studies, mission synergies, and astrobiological implications. Submissions that integrate observations, experiments and modeling, explore surface-environment coupling, assess biosignature preservation, or develop cross-mission strategies in support of the search for life on icy worlds are especially encouraged.