A year from launch, the Europa Clipper spacecraft nears finish line

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.—The launch window for one of the crucial 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 price: Are there locations beneath the floor of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that would help life?

Europa is barely smaller than Earth’s Moon, and is considerably extra fascinating to scientists trying to find life. The icy world harbors an unlimited international ocean of liquid water beneath a frozen crust. Clipper will sail previous Europa almost 50 instances, coming as shut as 16 miles (25 kilometers) from its icy floor to interrogate the moon with a classy suite of 9 devices.

Jordan Evans, who leads the workforce creating Europa Clipper at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, instructed 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 may very well 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 House Middle, Europa Clipper’s launch website, nearly 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 Photo voltaic System. NASA officers lastly dominated out launching Clipper on the House Launch System after engineers found the spacecraft may very well be broken by vibrations induced by the rocket’s solid-fueled boosters.

In 2021, NASA selected 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 business rocket. Meaning Clipper will enter orbit round Jupiter in 2030.

The pandemic additionally threw a wrench into the mission. Supply dates slipped for a few of Clipper’s science devices as they encountered technical snags. However Evans stated Tuesday that technicians assembling Clipper at JPL not too long ago put in the ultimate elements wanted for the spacecraft to begin a remaining spherical of exams earlier than cargo from the California lab to the launch website in Florida subsequent Could.

These remaining 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 not too long ago put in on the primary physique of the spacecraft, together with a high-gain communications antenna to transmit knowledge again to Earth.

“At launch minus one 12 months, we’ve 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 take a look at chamber to blast it with sound, mimicking the acoustic atmosphere it must stand up to throughout launch. They may also 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 take a look at, a milestone to make sure all the electronics aboard Clipper can function collectively as designed. Across the finish of the 12 months, engineers will switch the spacecraft right into a thermal vacuum chamber to topic it to the intense cold and hot temperature swings it should see in house.

A number of the exams nonetheless to come back for Clipper shall be simulations to verify the spacecraft’s response to issues. Can the spacecraft detect, diagnose, and defend 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 vital, 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 shall be mounted on the deployable photo voltaic panels. This radar package deal will measure the thickness of Europa’s international ice sheet, and research the interior construction of the icy crust, maybe discovering pockets of liquid water that join the floor with the ocean beneath.

The radar is without doubt one of the devices that units Clipper other than NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which gathered a lot of the knowledge we learn 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, moderately than at JPL, as a hedge towards delays in delivering these parts.

“There are at all times schedule dangers,” Evans stated. “The workforce is aware of we’ve acquired quite a bit nonetheless forward of us, however we positively have ample schedule margin (for launch subsequent October).”