KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—The launch window for some of the costly robotic house missions in NASA’s historical past opens one 12 months from Tuesday. Coming in at $5 billion, Europa Clipper will attempt to assist scientists reply a daring query commensurate with its eye-popping value: Are there locations under the floor of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that would help life?
Europa is barely smaller than Earth’s Moon, and is considerably extra attention-grabbing to scientists looking for life. The icy world harbors an unlimited world ocean of liquid water beneath a frozen crust. Clipper will sail previous Europa practically 50 occasions, coming as shut as 16 miles (25 kilometers) from its icy floor to interrogate the moon with a complicated suite of 9 devices.
Jordan Evans, who leads the workforce growing Europa Clipper at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, informed Ars on Tuesday the mission is on observe to depart for Jupiter throughout a 21-day planetary launch window opening on October 10, 2024.
The engineers who map out intricate interplanetary trajectories have even decided precisely when Europa Clipper must launch. If it flies on the primary day of the launch window, liftoff will happen at 11:51 am EDT, based on Evans. That could possibly be barely adjusted as navigators refine the mission’s trajectory.
“It’s a 6,000-kilogram [13,000-pound] spacecraft with 100-foot [30-meter] wingspan photo voltaic arrays, with delicate radar devices on them, the place all devices must function concurrently,” Evans stated. “So it’s a beast.”
Evans spoke with Ars on Tuesday on the Kennedy Space Center, Europa Clipper’s launch website, virtually precisely one 12 months, to the minute, earlier than the mission’s focused liftoff time. Evans is on the website this week, familiarizing himself with SpaceX’s operations as the corporate readies for the launch of a Falcon Heavy with NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission.
“Clipper is doing nice,” Evans stated, whereas acknowledging the mission has gone via its share of struggles.
Managers needed to overcome staffing points at JPL, which developed Europa Clipper in parallel with a minimum of 4 different main missions. Then, a political battle was waged over which rocket would ship Clipper into the Solar System. NASA officers lastly dominated out launching Clipper on the Space Launch System after engineers found the spacecraft could possibly be broken by vibrations induced by the rocket’s solid-fueled boosters.
In 2021, NASA chosen SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy for the job. The choice saved an estimated $2 billion, and a few novel trajectory design allowed Europa Clipper to take a extra direct route towards Jupiter than initially thought attainable with a launch on a industrial rocket. That means Clipper will enter orbit round Jupiter in 2030.
The pandemic additionally threw a wrench into the mission. Delivery dates slipped for a few of Clipper’s science devices as they encountered technical snags. But Evans stated Tuesday that technicians assembling Clipper at JPL just lately put in the ultimate parts wanted for the spacecraft to start out a closing spherical of assessments earlier than cargo from the California lab to the launch website in Florida subsequent May.
Those closing additions included all however one of many mission’s science devices, a set of cameras, spectrometers, and magnetometers to picture Europa and measure the detailed composition of its icy shell. Clipper’s electronics vault, an armored field to protect computer systems from the damaging radiation at Jupiter, was additionally just lately put in on the principle physique of the spacecraft, together with a high-gain communications antenna to transmit information again to Earth.
“At launch minus one 12 months, we now have taken the flight car via all of its paces,” Evans stated. “We’ve simulated launch, we’ve simulated trajectory correction maneuvers, Jupiter orbit insertion, and flybys of Europa with all of the devices working on the flight {hardware} and software program. The system carried out nice.”
Testing on faucet
Later this month, Clipper’s floor workforce at JPL will transfer the spacecraft right into a check chamber to blast it with sound, mimicking the acoustic surroundings it should face up to throughout launch. They may even put Clipper via vibration and shock testing to see how the craft responds to the shaking of a rocket flight.
Then comes an electromagnetic compatibility check, a milestone to make sure the entire electronics aboard Clipper can function collectively as designed. Around the tip of the 12 months, engineers will switch the spacecraft right into a thermal vacuum chamber to topic it to the intense cold and warm temperature swings it is going to see in house.
Some of the assessments nonetheless to come back for Clipper might be simulations to examine the spacecraft’s response to issues. Can the spacecraft detect, diagnose, and shield itself towards the glitches that would crop up throughout its mission?
“From right here on out, it’s all system-level testing to make sure that any flaws that acquired into that car—as a result of it’s the work of human fingers—that we are able to discover them and proper them, if mandatory, earlier than we get to launch one 12 months from right now,” Evans stated.
After transporting the spacecraft throughout the nation to Florida, Clipper’s engineers will set up the spacecraft’s European-built photo voltaic arrays. Antennas for the mission’s radar instrument might be mounted on the deployable photo voltaic panels. This radar package deal will measure the thickness of Europa’s world ice sheet, and research the interior construction of the icy crust, maybe discovering pockets of liquid water that join the floor with the ocean under.
The radar is among the devices that units Clipper other than NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which gathered a lot of the knowledge we find out about Europa throughout its mission at Jupiter greater than 20 years in the past. Mission managers determined to put in the photo voltaic panels and radar antennas on the launch website, slightly than at JPL, as a hedge towards delays in delivering these parts.
“There are all the time schedule dangers,” Evans stated. “The workforce is aware of we’ve acquired so much nonetheless forward of us, however we undoubtedly have ample schedule margin (for launch subsequent October).”