Numerical simulations of lithospheric shortening on the ice-covered moons Europa and Enceladus

Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus have many commonalities; however, the surfaces of the two moons bear little resemblance to each other. Significantly, although both moons show ample evidence of lithospheric extension (e.g., rifting), only Enceladus has obvious features formed by lithospheric shortening. We hypothesize that this difference is primarily caused by the thermal conditions when tectonic activity occurred. Enceladus’ cold surface favors faulting and the formation of ridges and troughs during lithospheric shortening, whereas Europa’s warmer temperatures lead to folding. The latter are difficult to identify in the sparse available topography data for Europa. The twenty numerical simulations of tectonism on icy moons collected here support that hypothesis. The simulations were performed using the Tekton2.3 finite element code, which solves the non-Newtonian viscoelastic constitutive equations in plain strain. This collection includes the input file, two output files, and a figure showing the distribution of brittle failure and the surface deformation for each simulation. The simulations are described in more detail in the accompanying publication (Bland et al. 2025).