NASA’s Europa Clipper – a future mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa – has completed its first major review by the agency and now is entering the development phase.
Artist’s concept shows a simulated view from the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
“It’s a great day for science. We are thrilled to pass the first major milestone in the lifecycle of a mission that will ultimately inform us on the habitability of Europa,” said Dr Joan Salute, Europa program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Most of what scientists know of Europa they have gleaned from a few close flybys from NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the 1990s.
Even in these fleeting encounters, researchers have seen a fractured, icy world with tantalizing signs of a liquid water ocean under its surface. Such an environment could potentially be a hospitable home for microbial life.
The current Europa Clipper mission plan calls for a solar-powered spacecraft to be launched to Jupiter in the 2020s, arriving in the distant planet’s orbit after a journey of several years.
The spacecraft would orbit the giant planet about every two weeks, providing many opportunities for close flybys of the icy moon.
In total, the Europa Clipper would perform 45 flybys at altitudes ranging from 16 miles to 1,700 miles (25 km to 2,700 km), imaging the Europa’s icy surface at high resolution and investigating its composition and the structure of its interior and icy shell.
“Today we’re taking an exciting step from concept to mission, in our quest to find signs of life beyond Earth,” noted Dr John Grunsfeld of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
“Observations of Europa have provided us with tantalizing clues over the last two decades, and the time has come to seek answers to one of humanity’s most profound questions.”
Instruments selected for the Europa Clipper’s scientific payload were announced on May 26 and include: SUrface Dust Mass Analyzer (SUDA), Europa Imaging System (EIS), Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS), Interior Characterization of Europa using Magnetometry (ICEMAG), Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE), Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON), MAss SPectrometer for Planetary EXploration/Europa (MASPEX), and the Ultraviolet Spectrograph/Europa (UVS).
