Ocean worlds have been identified as high-priority astrobiology targets due to the link between life and liquid water. Young surface terrain on many icy bodies indicates they support active geophysical cycles that may facilitate ocean-surface transport that could provide observables for upcoming missions. Accurately interpreting spacecraft observations requires constraining the relationship between ice shell characteristics and interior dynamics. On Earth, the composition, physical characteristics, and bioburden of ocean-derived ices are related to their formation history and parent fluid composition. In such systems the ice-ocean interface, which exists as a multiphase mushy layer, dictates the overlying ice’s properties and evolution. Inclusion of the physics governing these boundaries is a novel strategy in modeling planetary ices, and thus far has been limited to 1D approaches. Here we present results from 2D simulations of an archetypal ice-ocean world. We track the evolution of temperature, salinity, porosity, and brine velocity within a thickening ice shell enabling us to place improved constraints on ice-ocean world properties, including: the composition of planetary ice shells, the thickness and hydraulic connectivity of ice-ocean interfaces, and heterogeneous dynamics/structures in the interfacial mushy layer. We show that stable eutectic horizons are likely a common feature of ice-ocean worlds and that ocean composition plays an important role in governing the structure and dynamics of the interface, including the formation of chemical gradient-rich regions within the mushy layer. We discuss the geophysical and astrobiological implications of our results and highlight how they can be validated by instrument specific measurements.

Sea ice is a porous mushy layer composed of ice crystals and interstitial brine. The dense brine tends to sink through the ice, driving convection. Downwelling at the edge of convective cells leads to the development of narrow, entirely liquid brine channels. The channels provide an efficient pathway for drainage of the cold, saline brine into the underlying ocean. This brine rejection provides an important buoyancy forcing on the ocean, and causes variation of the internal structure and properties of sea ice on seasonal and shorter timescales. This process is inherently multiscale, with simulations requiring resolution from O(mm) brine-channel scales to O(m) mushy-layer dynamic scales. We present new, fully 3-dimensional numerical simulations of ice formation and convective brine rejection that model flow through a reactive porous ice matrix with evolving porosity. To accurately resolve the wide range of dynamical scales, our simulations exploit Adaptive Mesh Refinement using the Chombo framework. This allows us to integrate over several months of ice growth, providing insights into mushy-layer dynamics throughout the winter season. The convective desalination of sea ice promotes increased internal solidification, and we find that convective brine drainage is restricted to a narrow porous layer at the ice-ocean interface. This layer evolves as the ice grows thicker over time. Away from this interface, stagnant sea ice consists of a network of previously active brine channels that retain higher solute concentrations than the surrounding ice. We investigate the response of ice growth and brine drainage to varying atmospheric cooling conditions, and consider the potential implications for ice-ocean brine fluxes, nutrient transport, and sea ice ecology.