Europa Clipper, NASA’s Mission to Jupiter’s Oceanic Moon, Is ‘Go’ for Launch

Europa Clipper, NASA’s Mission to Jupiter’s Oceanic Moon, Is ‘Go’ for Launch

By Michael Greshko & Nature journal

After a long time of dreaming of Jupiter’s moon Europa — and the huge ocean that in all probability lies beneath its icy floor — scientists at the moment are weeks away from sending a spacecraft there. NASA confirmed yesterday that its Europa Clipper mission will launch on schedule, following a scare that it may need to be considerably delayed owing to probably defective transistors put in on the US$5-billion spacecraft.

“We’re assured that our stunning spacecraft and succesful crew are prepared for launch operations and our full science mission at Europa,” Laurie Leshin, the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, mentioned at a 9 September press convention.

With a mass of greater than 3.2 tonnes, a top of roughly 5 metres, and a width of greater than 30 metres with its photo voltaic panels totally unfurled, Europa Clipper is the biggest spacecraft that NASA has ever constructed for a planetary mission. Yesterday, the mission handed what’s recognized in NASA parlance as ‘key determination level E’ — the ultimate overview hurdle that must be cleared earlier than continuing in direction of launch. The spacecraft’s launch window opens on 10 October.

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If it takes off efficiently subsequent month, the orbiter will arrive at Jupiter in April 2030. Its 9 devices will then examine each Europa’s icy crust and the ocean that scientists suspect lies beneath it, to find out whether or not the moon may help life as we all know it. Earlier missions have instructed that Europa’s icy floor hides a subterranean ocean of brine with greater than twice the quantity of water in Earth’s oceans. The moon’s fissured, seemingly younger floor additionally implies that the satellite tv for pc has energetic geology — hinting that Europa’s inside could possibly be heat and dynamic sufficient for the advanced chemistry of life.

There’s no such factor as a tricorder — a fictional instrument from the Star Trek universe — that we will purpose at one thing to disclose whether or not it’s alive, mentioned Curt Niebur, the Europa Clipper programme scientist at NASA’s headquarters in Washington DC, in the course of the press convention. “This can be very troublesome to have the ability to detect life, particularly from orbit,” he mentioned. “First, we’re going to ask the easy query: Are the correct elements there for all times to exist?”

Uneven waters en path to an ocean world

Earlier than the transistor scare, Europa Clipper had endured its share of setbacks. In 2019, NASA angered scientists by chopping a complicated magnetometer from the spacecraft, citing price range considerations. The mission additionally endured uncertainty for years over how it will get to house. That’s as a result of the US Congress had lengthy mandated that the spacecraft fly aboard NASA’s long-delayed Area Launch System rocket. Lastly, in 2020, US lawmakers allowed the programme to pick the dependable Falcon Heavy rocket from non-public agency SpaceX in Brownsville, Texas, for the launch.

The attainable transistor drawback reared its head in Could this 12 months when NASA engineers learnt that batches of a sure sort of transistor already put in on the Europa Clipper spacecraft have been misbehaving. The parts, known as MOSFETS (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors), act like switches in electrical circuits. They got here from a NASA provider, the corporate Infineon, primarily based in Neubiberg, Germany.

As a result of Europa Clipper is ready to fly previous Europa 49 occasions, at distances as shut as 25 kilometres, the spacecraft may also must fly via a fusillade of charged particles accelerated by Jupiter’s magnetic area, which is roughly 20,000 occasions as sturdy as Earth’s. Which means that the electronics housed within the orbiter should resist radiation harm.

However in Could NASA mentioned it was analyzing whether or not the mission’s transistors risked malfunctioning. The company launched into 4 months of 24-hour intensive testing at three completely different services: JPL; the Johns Hopkins Utilized Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland; and the NASA Goddard Area Flight Heart in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This was an enormous raise, and I feel ‘big raise’ is a large understatement,” Leshin mentioned.

After evaluating spare MOSFETs from the identical batches that have been put in on Europa Clipper, NASA discovered that the spacecraft’s circuits would carry out as anticipated. This conclusion partially rests on the truth that in the course of the first half of its four-year baseline mission orbiting Jupiter, the spacecraft can be within the worst of Jupiter’s radiation just one out of each 21 days. The remainder of the time, the orbiter’s transistors can partially self-heal from radiation harm when gently heated, by way of a course of known as annealing.

“Whereas Europa Clipper does dip into the radiation setting, as soon as it comes out, it comes out lengthy sufficient for these transistors the chance to heal and partially get well between flybys,” mentioned Jordan Evans, the Europa Clipper venture supervisor at JPL in the course of the convention. “We are able to — I’ve excessive confidence, and the information bears it out — full the unique mission.”

This text is reproduced with permission and was first revealed on September 10, 2024.