One day later launch a Starship rocket In a spectacular test flight in Texas, SpaceX prepared for Monday’s launch of a Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida to send a $5.2 billion NASA probe on a $1.8 billion journey. miles towards Jupiter to discover if one of its moons hosts a habitable basement. ocean.
If all goes well, the Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter in April 2030, making 49 close flybys of the icy moon Europa, an ice-covered world whose interior is warmed by the relentless pressure of Earth’s gravity. Jupiter as it oscillates around the giant. planet in a slightly elliptical orbit.
NASA
Data from previous missions and long-term studies conducted on Earth indicate that a vast ocean of salty water lies beneath the Moon’s frozen crust, providing a potentially habitable environment. It’s unclear whether microbial life exists in this ocean, but Europa Clipper’s instruments will attempt to find out if it’s at least possible.
“Europa is an ice-covered moon of Jupiter, the size of Earth’s moon, but thought to have a global subsurface ocean that contains more than twice as much water as all of Earth’s oceans brought together,” said project scientist Robert Pappalardo.
“We want to determine whether Europa has the potential to support simple life in the deep ocean, beneath its ice layer,” he said. “We want to understand whether Europa has the key ingredients to support life in its ocean, the right chemical elements and an energy source for life.”
NASA had originally planned to launch the Clipper last week, but mission managers ordered a delay to avoid Hurricane Miltonwhich swept through Cape Canaveral on Thursday. An additional day of delay was ordered to resolve a technical problem and, although no details were provided, the rocket was cleared for launch.
Liftoff from historic Platform 39A at the Kennedy Space Center was scheduled for 12:06 p.m. EDT Monday. Generating more than 5 million pounds of thrust, the triple-core Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in SpaceX’s inventory, will propel the 12,800-pound Europa Clipper to the speed needed to break free from Earth’s gravity.
While SpaceX normally salvages the first stage boosters for refurbishment and reuse, the rocket’s three main boosters and second stage will use all of their propellants to accelerate the Clipper to the required departure speed from Earth. As such, no first stage recovery is possible.
“Falcon Heavy is giving Europa Clipper its all, sending the spacecraft to the farthest destination we’ve ever sent, which means the mission requires maximum performance, so we won’t be recovering the boosters,” said Julianna Scheiman , director of SpaceX. NASA Science Missions.
“I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine a better mission than sacrificing boosters so we can have the opportunity to discover life in our own solar system.”
To reach Jupiter, the Clipper will first fly by Mars on March 1, using the Red Planet’s gravity to increase its speed and bend the trajectory to return the probe to Earth for another gravity-assisted flyby in December 2026. This will finally put the Clipper on its way to Jupiter.
NASA
If all goes well, the probe will orbit Jupiter on April 11, 2030, using the moon Ganymede’s gravity to slow down before a six- to seven-hour firing of the probe’s thrusters. The first of 49 planned flybys of Europe, some as little as 16 miles above the surface, will begin in early 2031.
The mission is expected to last at least three years with the possibility of extension depending on the health of the spacecraft.
In either case, the Clipper will end its journey with a kamikaze descent to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede to avoid any risk of a future uncontrolled accident on Europa that could bring terrestrial microbes to the moon and its possibly habitable underground environment.
“The spacecraft faces big challenges,” Pappalardo said. “Jupiter’s distance is five times farther from the sun than Earth. This means that it is very cold there and there is only little sunlight to power the solar panels. So they are huge.”
Once deployed, the 13.5-foot-wide solar panels will span more than 100 feet from end to end – more than the length of a basketball court – with two radar antennas spanning 58 feet from each network.
Aside from energy requirements, Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field “acts like a giant particle accelerator on Europa,” he said. “A human would receive a lethal dose of radiation in just a few minutes to a few hours if exposed to this environment.”
The Clipper was designed to withstand repeated doses of extreme radiation while making close flybys over Europe, housing its flight computer and other particularly sensitive equipment inside a vault protected by foil. aluminum-zinc alloy.
But engineers were dismayed to discover earlier this year that critical electrical components used throughout the spacecraft were failing at lower radiation levels than expected.
Engineers and managers conducted an extensive review to determine how this might affect the Clipper and ultimately concluded that the spacecraft could minimize radiation-induced degradation by slightly changing the way flybys are executed. The only alternative was to delay the launch for several years to replace suspect components.
The mission scientists were eager to finally launch the long-awaited mission.
“What would be the biggest result? For me, it would be to find a sort of oasis, if you will, on Europa where there would be traces of liquid water not far below the surface, traces of organic matter at the surface,” Pappalardo said. “In the future, perhaps NASA could send a lander to dig beneath the surface and literally search for signs of life.”
NASA
As for what kind of life might be possible beneath the Moon’s frozen surface, “we’re really talking about simple things, like single-celled organisms,” he said. “We don’t expect much energy for life in the European ocean like we do here on the Earth’s surface.
“So we don’t expect fish and whales and that sort of thing,” he added. “But we wonder if Europa could support simple life, single-celled organisms?”
The Clipper is equipped with nine cutting-edge instruments, including narrow-angle and wide-angle visible light cameras that will map approximately 90% of Europa’s surface, imaging details down to the size of a car. An infrared camera that will look for warmer regions where water might be closer to the surface or even projected into space.
“The cameras will observe more than 90 percent of Europa’s surface with a resolution of less than 100 meters per pixel, or 325 feet,” said Cynthia Phillips, project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It’s about the size of a city block.
“The narrow-angle camera will be able to take photos at a resolution of up to half a meter per pixel. That’s about 1.6 feet. So it will be able to see car-sized objects on the surface of Europe.”
Two spectrometers will study the surface chemistry and composition of the Moon’s ultrathin atmosphere, looking for signs of water plumes and other ocean features. Two magnetometers will probe the underground ocean by studying electric currents induced by Jupiter’s magnetic field.
Ice-penetrating radar will “see” up to 19 miles below the icy crust to look for pockets of water in the ice and help scientists understand how ice and water interact with the presumed ocean.
“These signals will penetrate underground, where they may bounce off a layer of liquid water, like a lake in the icy shell, or perhaps even penetrate completely, depending on the thickness of the ice layer of surface area and other factors, such as its structure and composition,” Phillips said.
“The radar could penetrate up to 30 kilometers deep, or about 19 miles below the surface.”
Two other instruments will study gas and dust particles on the surface and suspended in the atmosphere to analyze their chemical composition. Finally, scientists will measure tiny changes in the probe’s trajectory, allowing them to gather details about Europa’s internal structure.
“We think of our Earth as an ocean world, but Europa is representative of a new class of ocean worlds, icy worlds located in the distant outer solar system, where saltwater oceans may exist beneath their icy surfaces,” he said. Pappalardo said. “In fact, icy ocean worlds may be the most widespread habitat for life, not only in our solar system, but in the entire universe.
“Europa Clipper will, for the first time, explore such a world in depth. …We are on the threshold of a new era of exploration. We have been working on this mission for so long. We will discover how deep the worlds Habitable ice can be common or rare.
