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🧊 Subsurface Ocean Vents on Icy Moons

A cutaway 3D model of an icy moon's ice shell, subsurface ocean and seafloor hydrothermal vent — tune vent heat output and ice thickness, then launch a cryobot to melt through the ice and dive to the vent.

Geology & Earth Science3DAdvanced60 FPS💧 Water 🌍 Earth ❄️ Ice & Cold

🔬 What It Demonstrates

The layered structure of an ice-shelled ocean world — rocky core, liquid ocean, ice shell — and how a seafloor vent's heat output and the ice shell's thickness together shape how promising, and how reachable, a target is for astrobiology.

🎮 How to Use

Switch between Europa and Enceladus, drag the heat and ice-thickness sliders to see the plume and biosignature score respond, then click "Launch cryobot" to watch a probe melt through the ice and travel to the vent.

💡 Did You Know?

Enceladus's ice shell is thin enough near its south pole that its ocean vents plumes directly into space — Cassini flew through them and detected the chemical fingerprints of hydrothermal activity without landing at all.

⚙ Under the hood

ice-oceanshydrothermal ventsmoon-explorationcryobotplanetary sciencegeothermal energyThree.js

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install