5 upvotes, 0 direct replies (showing 0)
View submission: Why does Ganymede have no atmosphere while Titan does?
Yeah, I would guess that Jupiter's magnetosphere does play at least some role. Escape rates from Ganymede are somewhat unconstrained right now because we don't have that much data but it has been modeled a lot. This paper, Vorburger et al., 2022[1], more or less says that water products sputtered from the surface mostly are either adsorbed back by the surface or escape. There is also a sublimated component, of course, but it is much smaller than Titan, so maybe the better question is why is Titan's atmosphere so much larger?
1: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1624110/FULLTEXT01.pdf
We will understand Ganymede's exosphere and magnetosphere much better after JUICE gets there, for sure.
There's nothing here!