NASA Launches Europa Clipper To Probe Jupiter's Icy Moon for Signs of Life 41
NASA's Europa Clipper mission lifted off successfully on Monday, marking the agency's first mission to Jupiter in over a decade. The $5.2 billion spacecraft aims to investigate whether Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, could harbor conditions suitable for life. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. Eastern time, lifting the Europa Clipper spacecraft into orbit around Earth.
Europa Clipper, NASA's largest-ever interplanetary craft, weighs 12,500 pounds and boasts solar panels spanning 100 feet. Its nine scientific instruments will study Europa's surface and interior in unprecedented detail. After a 1.8 billion-mile journey, the spacecraft will reach Jupiter in April 2030. It will then conduct 49 flybys of Europa over four years, coming within 16 miles of the moon's surface.
Scientists believe Europa's subsurface ocean could contain twice as much water as Earth's oceans. The mission will measure ocean depth, analyze surface compounds, and map Europa's magnetic field to gather clues about its internal composition. Instruments will search for warm spots indicating thin ice, potential cryovolcanoes, and plumes of water vapor. The spacecraft will also attempt to identify carbon-based molecules that could serve as building blocks for life. "Europa is certainly the most likely place for life beyond Earth in our solar system," Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist, told the New York Times.
Europa Clipper, NASA's largest-ever interplanetary craft, weighs 12,500 pounds and boasts solar panels spanning 100 feet. Its nine scientific instruments will study Europa's surface and interior in unprecedented detail. After a 1.8 billion-mile journey, the spacecraft will reach Jupiter in April 2030. It will then conduct 49 flybys of Europa over four years, coming within 16 miles of the moon's surface.
Scientists believe Europa's subsurface ocean could contain twice as much water as Earth's oceans. The mission will measure ocean depth, analyze surface compounds, and map Europa's magnetic field to gather clues about its internal composition. Instruments will search for warm spots indicating thin ice, potential cryovolcanoes, and plumes of water vapor. The spacecraft will also attempt to identify carbon-based molecules that could serve as building blocks for life. "Europa is certainly the most likely place for life beyond Earth in our solar system," Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist, told the New York Times.
Hurray! (Score:3)
Great to hear it's on its way! We've been speculating about the sub-ice oceans for a long time, now; time to learn how thick the ice shell is, and how deep under it we need to go to get to the sea below.
Re: (Score:3)
The 8-year-old boy inside me still finds rocket launches completely amazing and awesome!
Re: (Score:2)
Real News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
We really should send a smart craft out to Proxima Centauri B too,
Using any technology that actually exists today, it would take about 75,000 years arrive.
Re: (Score:1)
We should really wait to see what happens with this Europa mission before doing that anyway, we might not even be there after that. They have warned us, but no, we never listen:
“ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA.
ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.
USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quot... [goodreads.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:1)
We're just taking a look. No one said anything about *landing*...
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks! I feel better now! I thought they'd send a probe on that moon surface. Hopefully, "just having a look" won't trigger any countermeasures but why take the risk anyway? /s
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Report [wikipedia.org]
Re: Hurray! (Score:2)
And now we've got one big enough to send a sub. In space.
Re: Hurray! (Score:1)
Another win (Score:1)
Re:Another win (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you even hear yourself?
You believe one of the dumbest people on the planet just launched a probe to Jupiter.
I don't like the guy's ethics at all but when his people say your people live in a non-reality world this is what they mean.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't believe he built the probe, the rocket, or planned the launch.
He has a piece of a paper that says he owns(a significant percentage of) the company that built the rocket, I'm sure you understand the difference.
Reportedly Starship was a project other executives set aside as "Musk Led" so he wouldn't interfere too much with the engineering on the other rockets, because he was reportedly a relentless micromanager with no useful skills who they needed to get out of the designers' hair. Don't know that t
Re:Another win (Score:4, Insightful)
Everybody wants to call Elon Musk wonderful, wonderful, nothing but wonderful, or rotten, rotten, nothing but rotten.
People are more complex than that. It's ok to understand that he can be both good and bad in different spheres.
A lot of the credit for what SpaceX has done should go to the employees actually doing the work, the engineers and the technicians and the workers and the Chief Operating Officer, Gwynne Shotwell, who keeps it all from running off the rails. But, like it or not, yes, it's Elon Musk's company, and Musk was the driving force pushing it to develop the Falcon series of rockets, including the Falcon Heavy that launched Europa Clipper.
You can celebrate SpaceX's successes without having to like Elon Musk personally, or agree with his (rather simplistic) politics.
Re: (Score:1)
He has a piece of a paper that says he owns(a significant percentage of) the company that built the rocket, I'm sure you understand the difference.
So, you mean it's just like Joe Biden who has a piece of paper saying he is POTUS? I'm sure you understand the difference.
Re: (Score:3)
You believe one of the dumbest people on the planet just launched a probe to Jupiter.
Elon Musk would be the lord and savior of every nerd on Slashdot if....
he was a liberal.
Re: (Score:1)
He pretended to be a liberal for years before this latest "coming out as a far right psycho" thing, and I disliked him for years before that for things like silencing whistleblowers, union-busting, and the (rather expensive) PR campaign about making him out to be a hero for buying ownership stake of an existing electric car company.
I think a lot of people started seeing through the bullshit around the time of hyperloop/boring company, ideas that were just incredibly stupid in a way reusable rockets and elec
Re: (Score:3)
He haven't much changed. He's still libertarian (little l). It's just the left is going warp speed leftward that his original position looks Far Right in comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not going to get into a long or complex argument about another person's politics, as that is a tremendous waste of time, but no. He tried to describe himself as a socialist. It was obviously not true at the time, but he said it.
Re: (Score:2)
Elon Musk's philosophy is grievance, driven by all the times he didn't get his way. He sees himself as the champion of others who have suffered similar indignity. It's no wonder that so many of his fans are a toxic collage of untreated personality disorders.
Re: (Score:3)
I acknowledge that both parties have changed somewhat, as for example, there used to be pro-life Democrats and pro-
Re: (Score:2)
No, simply being liberal doesn't make him less of an unbearable lying thundercunt. Not everything is about politics, in fact most people don't give a shit about it.
I appreciate the work of SpaceX and honestly I'm disappointed to see Slashdotters diminish the work of the engineers and scientists working there by worshiping Elon Musk instead of the actual geniuses who did the work.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully his annoyance (and successes) will lead other rich people to do the same and actually invest the fortunes they have in something useful, even if its just to overcompensate for something.
Who knows, some even may get inspired into doing a massive city sized O'Neill cylinder or two.
It's the biggest cylinder could make.
Re: (Score:2)
As much as I don't like him either, I fully support all space program stuff the company he purchased does. Mostly due to the hope that one day he may take that trip to mars, the moon or where ever and not come back.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
It is a win for NASA, not the taxi that NASA picked this time.
Re: (Score:1)
but... but... its a fully self driving taxi....
Phew (Score:4, Insightful)
No landing attempts.
We're safe for now.
Very good (Score:2)
The hurricane was quite a worry
There is a problem with the MOSFETs (Score:2)
According to this article [nytimes.com] (non-paywalled) there is a serious potential problem with the MOSFETs that were used in the spacecraft. Some of them may not be able to withstand the radiation intensity in Jupiter's orbit.
Considering that they chose to launch, I hope whatever strategy the engineers decided to aplly works flawlessly.
Re: (Score:3)
- They tested every MOSFET lot identified at risk (International Rectifier n-MOSFETs generation 5, 6 and 7), in application conditions. They actually asked every subcontractor for every instrument and equipment on the spacecraft to send them remaining parts in their inventory.
- Because of temperature dependent effects and time dependent effects (mainly concerning annealing of total ionizing dose damage), they could only test up to the mission
Re: (Score:1)
> to monitor the parts degradation during the actual flight, they designed this summer what they call a "canary box": an equipment with the most sensitive lots of MOSFET onboard...
Smart! It's good science to test such effects in general in actual space conditions. Pioneers 10 & 11 kept glitching due to Jupiter's radiation belt, but the experience gained made the Voyagers' more robust. Pioneer 11 also tested the debris level near the plane of the rings to make sure it wouldn't pelt future probes.
Correction (Score:2)
Correction: debris level near the plane of Saturn's rings
Re: (Score:2)
And they found that they could run a periodic in-situ annealing cycle that will mitigate the damage from radiation, turning a doom-and-gloom story into a rousing cheer for engineers!
No microscope? (Score:3)
Capturing ice from orbit, melting it, and looking at the water under a microscope seems like a pretty obvious experiment to run if you're looking for evidence of life. They do have a dust analyzer. But why no microscope?
Kudos to SLS! (Score:3)
My congratulations to SLS on pulling off this historic launch!
Oh, wait.
So kudos to Blue Origin!
uhm, no?
ok, it must be an old Boeing rocket.