Artist’s making of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
< period class ="glossaryLink" aria-describedby ="tt" data-cmtooltip ="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>NASA</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. It's vision is "To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity."</div>" data-gt-translate-attributes="[{" attribute="">NASA’s mission to explore Jupiter’s icy moon takes a big step forward as engineers deliver a major component of the spacecraft.
Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon, almost certainly has a vast ocean beneath its icy shell. In fact, scientists believe this ocean contains more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. The complex chemistry required for life as we know it to exist requires liquid water, making this ocean one of the key reasons astrobiologists want to study Europa.
NASA’s Europa Clipper will be equipped with science instruments needed to study Europa to see if it harbors conditions suitable for supporting life. It is expected to launch in 2024 and take several years to reach Jupiter. Once there, it will orbit the planet, during which it will soar past Europa some 45 times or so. During each flyby, it will scan the moon and then report the data back to Earth.
Now, the main body of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft has just been delivered to the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. Over the next two years there, engineers and technicians will finish assembling the craft by hand before testing it to make sure it can withstand the journey to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is visible in a main clean room at JPL, as engineers and technicians inspect it just after delivery in early June 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
The spacecraft body is the mission’s workhorse. Standing 10 feet (3 meters) tall and 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide, it’s an aluminum cylinder integrated with electronics, radios, thermal loop tubing, cabling, and the propulsion system. With its solar arrays and other deployable equipment stowed for launch, Europa Clipper will be as large as an SUV; when extended, the solar arrays make the craft the size of a basketball court. It is the largest NASA spacecraft ever developed for a planetary mission.
“It’s an exciting time for the whole project team and a huge milestone,” said Jordan Evans, the mission’s project manager at JPL. “This delivery brings us one step closer to launch and the Europa Clipper science investigation.”
This video catches the shipment of the core of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft to the company’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in SouthernCalifornia The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory developed and constructed the spacecraft body in cooperation with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space FlightCenter Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Set to introduce in October 2024, Europa Clipper will carry out almost 50 flybys of Europa, which researchers are positive harbors an internal ocean consisting of two times as much water as Earth’s oceans integrated. And the ocean might presently have conditions ideal for supporting life. The spacecraft’s 9 science instruments will collect information on Europa’s environment, surface area, and interior– info that researchers will utilize to assess the depth and salinity of the ocean, the density of the ice crust, and prospective plumes that might be venting subsurface water into area.
“If there is life in Europa, it almost certainly was completely independent from the origin of life on earth… that would mean the origin of life must be pretty easy throughout the galaxy and beyond.”– Robert (Bob) Pappalardo, Europa Mission Project Scientist
Those instruments currently have actually started coming to JPL, where the stage called assembly, test, and launch operations has actually been in progress given thatMarch The ultraviolet spectrograph, called Europa- UVS, gotten here inMarch Next came the spacecraft’s thermal emission imaging instrument, E-THEMIS, provided by the researchers and engineers leading its advancement at Arizona StateUniversity E-THEMIS is an advanced infrared cam developed to map Europa’s temperature levels and assist researchers discover ideas about the moon’s geological activity– consisting of areas where liquid water might be near the surface area.
By completion of 2022, the majority of the flight hardware and the rest of the science instruments are anticipated to be total.
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is being unwrapped in a primary tidy space at JPL, as engineers and specialists examine it simply after shipment in early June2022 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
The Whole Package
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, developed Europa Clipper’s body in cooperation with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,Maryland “The flight system designed, built, and tested by APL – using a team of hundreds of engineers and technicians – was the physically largest system ever built by APL,” stated APL’s Tom Magner, the objective’s assistant job supervisor.
The deal with the primary module continues now at JPL.
“What arrived at JPL represents essentially an assembly phase unto itself. Under APL’s leadership, this delivery includes work by that institution and two NASA centers. Now the team will take the system to an even higher level of integration,” stated Evans.
The primary body of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is seen in its shipping container, simply after showing up aboard a C-17 freight airplane at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County,California Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
The primary structure is in fact 2 stacked aluminum cylinders dotted with threaded holes for bolting on the spacecraft’s freight: the radio frequency module, radiation displays, propulsion electronic devices, power converters, and electrical wiring. The radio frequency subsystem will power 8 antennas, consisting of a massive high-gain antenna that determines 10 feet (3 meters) large. The structure’s web of electrical wires and ports, called the harness, weighs 150 pounds (68 kgs) by itself; if extended, it would run nearly 2,100 feet (640 meters)– two times the border of a football field.
The durable electronic devices vault, constructed to hold up against the extreme radiation of the Jupiter system, will be incorporated with the primary spacecraft structure in addition to the science instruments.
Inside the primary body of the spacecraft are 2 tanks– one to hold fuel, one for oxidizer– and the tubing that will bring their contents to a range of 24 engines, where they will integrate to develop a regulated chain reaction that produces thrust.
The primary body of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is seen in its shipping container as it rolls into the company’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in SouthernCalifornia Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
“Our engines are dual purpose,” stated JPL’s Tim Larson, the deputy job supervisor. “We use them for big maneuvers, including when we approach Jupiter and need a large burn to be captured in Jupiter’s orbit. But they’re also designed for smaller maneuvers to manage the attitude of the spacecraft and to fine tune the precision flybys of Europa and other solar system bodies along the way.”
Those huge and little maneuvers will enter play a lot throughout the six-year, 1.8-billion-mile (2.9-billion-kilometer) journey to this ocean world, which Europa Clipper will start examining in earnest in 2031.
More About the Mission
Missions such as Europa Clipper add to the field of astrobiology, the interdisciplinary research study on the variables and conditions of far-off worlds that might harbor life as we understand it. While Europa Clipper is not a life-detection objective, it will carry out comprehensive reconnaissance of Europa and examine whether the icy moon, with its subsurface ocean, has the ability to support life. Understanding Europa’s habitability will assist researchers much better comprehend how life established on Earth and the capacity for discovering life beyond our world.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the advancement of the Europa Clipper objective in collaboration with APL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate inWashington The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, performs program management of the Europa Clipper objective.
