The spaceship Europa Clipper passed an important milestone on Monday (9) and is set to launch next month to explore and search for signs of habitability on one of Jupiter’s moons according to NASA. The launch window for its journey begins on October 10.
The mission has passed Key Decision Point E, a critical planning stage for approval before the mission can proceed with launch. The approval was a relief for the Europa Clipper team after a possible transistor problem on the spacecraft was discovered in May.
Transistors help control the vehicle’s flow of electricity, and engineers were concerned about the components’ survival in Jupiter’s harsh radiation environment.
Extensive testing of the transistors took place over four months at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland; and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The team was able to complete the necessary tests on time, avoiding a 13-month delay in the launch to explore Europa, Jupiter’s ice-covered moon that may have the potential to harbor life in its salty, subterranean ocean. Europa Clipper carries 10 scientific instruments that could determine whether life is possible elsewhere in our solar system besides Earth.
Europa Clipper has now been approved for launch, with no changes to the mission plan, objectives or trajectory.
“It’s the last kind of major review before we really get into the launch fever, and we’re very happy to say that they unequivocally passed that review today,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during a news conference Monday.
Solving the radiation problem
In May, the transistors’ manufacturer warned the mission team that the parts may not be as radiation-resistant as previously believed. The transistors are located throughout the spacecraft.
Jupiter dwarfs all other worlds in size as the largest planet in our solar system, and has a magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s. This magnetic field traps charged particles and accelerates them to high speeds. The fast-moving particles release energy in the form of intense radiation that bombards Europa and Jupiter’s other moons.
Any spacecraft bound for Jupiter needs radiation-resistant electronics.
“Jupiter has more radiation than any other planet in our solar system, and that’s one of the reasons why exploring the Jupiter system is so challenging,” said Jordan Evans, Europa Clipper project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
“Europa is near the outer edge of the worst part of this radiation belt,” he added. “Flying close to Europa exposes us to this high flux of harmful particles, and so the mission and Europa Clipper engineers need to be sure that the spacecraft components can survive this radiation environment for the duration of our four-year mission.”
Data from previous NASA missions to Jupiter, including the Juno probe currently studying the planet and some of its moons, were used to validate the transistor testing process, Evans said.
The tests have been conducted around the clock since May and simulated spaceflight conditions to see how the spacecraft and its components would fare as the vehicle makes 49 flybys of Europa and ultimately 80 orbits around Jupiter over a four-year period.
The team determined that the transistors can self-repair between flybys.
“We concluded after all these tests that during our orbits around Jupiter, although Europa Clipper dips into the radiation environment, once it leaves, it leaves for long enough to give these transistors the opportunity to repair and partially recover between flybys,” Evans said.
A radiation monitor on the spacecraft will allow the team to check the performance of the transistors.
“I personally have great confidence that we can complete the original Europa exploration mission as planned,” Evans said.
Exploring an ocean world
When Curt Niebur, a Europa Clipper program scientist, joined NASA in 2003, he faced the task of carrying out the mission to Europa. With each passing year, the effort to design and build Europa Clipper seemed more difficult, he said.
“There has never been a harder year than this past year and especially this past summer,” Niebur said. “But through it all, the one thing we never doubted was that this would be worth it. This is a chance for us to explore, not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today — a chance to make the first exploration of this new type of world that we have very recently discovered, called an ocean world that is completely immersed and covered by an ocean of liquid water that is completely unlike anything we have ever seen before. That is what awaits us on Europa.”
Europa Clipper is not a life-detection mission, Niebur added.
The mission’s main goals are centered on finding out whether the right ingredients to sustain life as we know it — including water, energy and chemistry — are present on Europa. And without any scientific instruments that can directly determine the existence of life, Clipper cannot find conclusive evidence of it, he said.
“You can bet your bottom dollar that if Europa Clipper tells us that yes, those ingredients are there, we will be knocking on the door fighting for a second mission to look for life,” Niebur said.
Europa Clipper will be essential in helping NASA determine where to send follow-up missions, such as where parts of the ice crust may be thin and where water from the subsurface ocean may gush, said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“If we get there and we do that investigation, and the good news is that it has all the ingredients and it’s habitable, what that means is that there are two places in a solar system that have all the ingredients for life that are habitable right now at the same time,” Niebur said.
“Think about what this means when you extend this result to the billions and billions of other solar systems in this galaxy,” he added. “Leaving aside the question of whether ‘there is life’ on Europa, just the question of habitability itself opens up a huge new paradigm for the search for life in the galaxy.”
This content was originally published in NASA prepares mission for world that could currently be habitable on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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