Who is excited to send a craft to a foreign land? Every person I have talked to who is interested in planetary exploration is very enthusiastic about the upcoming Europa Clipper mission. It is believed that the most likely place in the Solar System to harbor life is the ocean of Europa. There are many mysteries about the moon.
The mission is scheduled to launch in 2024, and it will be used to gather data on the moon's atmosphere, surface, and interior. A suite of nine science instruments will investigate everything from the depth of the ocean to the thickness of the ice crust to the characteristics of potential plumes that may be releasing water into space.
The team is sharing some information about the project.
It is becoming real. JPL's Robert Pappalardo said that it is becoming tangible.
Since the mission passed reviews last year, the assembly of the spacecraft is taking place in clean rooms at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with components and science instruments arriving from across the US and Europe. Most of the flight hardware is expected to be finished by the end of the year.
Jan Chodas of JPL said that it will be exciting to see the pieces come together as a flight system. It is the next level of discovery to me. We will learn how the system will work.
As large as an SUV with solar panels, the Europa Clipper will be able to span a basketball court. The main body of the spaceship is 10 feet tall and the high-gain antenna is the same size.
The Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas delivered the first science instrument to JPL last week. The surface of Europa will be searched for signs of plumes by the ultraviolet spectrograph. The moon's surface and gases in the atmosphere are determined by the wavelength of the ultraviolet light collected by the instrument.
To make sure the instruments can communicate with the flight computer and the power subsystem, each component and instrument was tested.
The thermal vacuum chamber at JPL will be used to test the large flight system, once all the components have been integrated. Europa Clipper will be subjected to intense vibration testing to make sure it can survive a launch. Then it will be shipped to Florida for a launch.
The lead image caption is Clockwise from left: the ultraviolet spectrograph, the high-gain antenna, and the illustration of the spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Further reading: NASA.
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