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Space NASA

NASA Launches Europa Clipper To Probe Jupiter's Icy Moon for Signs of Life 70

Posted by msmash from the big-breakthroughs dept.
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.
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NASA Launches Europa Clipper To Probe Jupiter's Icy Moon for Signs of Life More

NASA Launches Europa Clipper To Probe Jupiter's Icy Moon for Signs of Life

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  • Hurray! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @11:27AM (#64863513) Homepage

    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.

    • The 8-year-old boy inside me still finds rocket launches completely amazing and awesome!

      • Real News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters!

        • It is awesome that we are going to search for life on Europa. We really should send a smart craft out to Proxima Centauri B too, with enough programming and self-guidance to navigate into orbit around it, last the long journey, and send signals back to earth documenting what it finds too, perhaps with a clone of the Voyager Golden Record. With these larger rockets (or maybe wait until the Starship can send it with a giant fuel tank), we should be able to get a little craft to go pretty fucking fast. I alway

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by taustin ( 171655 )

            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.

          • that sounds cool and all.... but when you say '... our descendants...' you knnow that it'd be amny, many, many generations from now? those descendants would be soo much further off in history, that they'd make us looking back at the signing of the Magna Carta look like it happened only yesterday. Imagine, it took Voyager 40 plus years to get to where it is today, barely at the edge of our solar system. Now, imagine that the star you picked is ~ 4.2 light years away, and the voyagers are not even 1 light yea

          • Proxima Centauri B is far enough away that the theoretical hang-up is always, "But we'll probably invent something in that timespan that will pass anything we could launch today." While there are a lot of naysayers today who believe science has found the limits of all possible knowledge, I don't see any reason that wouldn't be true given the timespans that would be involved for current tech reaching Proxima Centauri.

      • And now we've got one big enough to send a sub. In space.

      • I doubt there could be very many people that could not be moved by seeing a 23 story building doing shit like that, if only from the downdraught and the shock waves.

    • Given that it's all ice, why don't we send an RTG "drilling and swimming" probe that could go beneath and tell us more about it's oceans? If we build it right it might serve us decades like Voyagers.

      • Re: Hurray! (Score:4, Informative)

        by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @07:20PM (#64864777) Homepage

        Given that it's all ice, why don't we send an RTG "drilling and swimming" probe that could go beneath and tell us more about it's oceans? If we build it right it might serve us decades like Voyagers.

        Because first we need to know how thick the ice is. Also how electrically conductive the ice is (electrical conductivity causes attenuation of radio signals).

        But, with that said: yes, absolutely! https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citation... [nasa.gov]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Given that it's all ice, why don't we send an RTG "drilling and swimming" probe that could go beneath and tell us more about it's oceans? If we build it right it might serve us decades like Voyagers.

        I've long thought that an RTG melting through the ice while spooling out an optical fiber to a surface communications array made a lot of sense, and so far I've never seen anyone come up with a convincing reason why it wouldn't be a good idea.

        One thing will be necessary for any lander hardware: it has to be able to be completely sterilized inside and out. That would probably entail heating it to a degree that would kill anything on it, which is still an issue for any electronics.

        • I've long thought that an RTG melting through the ice while spooling out an optical fiber to a surface communications array made a lot of sense, and so far I've never seen anyone come up with a convincing reason why it wouldn't be a good idea.

          Ionizing radiation from Jupiter fries electronics relatively quickly. The Clipper mission handles this by positioning in a highly elliptical orbit that'll have it dive into the radiation belts and do high-speed flybys of Europa, before returning to the relative safety of the more distant parts of its orbit where it'll spend most of its mission time.

          "How to harden a communications array so that it can spend a significant amount of time sitting on the surface of Europa" is well beyond my realm of expertise,

  • Another win (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    for ELON MUSK.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It is a win for NASA, not the taxi that NASA picked this time.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        but... but... its a fully self driving taxi....

  • Phew (Score:5, Funny)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Monday October 14, 2024 @11:54AM (#64863593) Homepage Journal

    No landing attempts.

    We're safe for now.

  • The hurricane was quite a worry

  • 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:There is a problem with the MOSFETs (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cochonou ( 576531 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @03:09PM (#64864201) Homepage
      They did comprehensive risk mitigation actions since last may :
      - 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 baseline total ionizing dose constraint. They found the tested parts were to be suitable for the mission, however since they only had a limited number of parts, they do not know the real margin they have, especially if the temperature conditions differ significantly from the baseline.
      - So in order 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, with telemetry to actually measure the main electrical parameters that will degrade with total ionizing dose (mainly the gate-to-source voltage threshold).
      - If they measure a higher than expected degradation on the canary box, they will implement mitigation actions (such as shutting down some instruments to limit their total ionizing dose degradation or heating them up to increase annealing)
      In conclusion, they feel pretty safe to me...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        > 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      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)

    by dsanfte ( 443781 ) on Monday October 14, 2024 @03:29PM (#64864247) Journal

    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:4, Funny)

    by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Monday October 14, 2024 @04:01PM (#64864357) Journal

    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.

  • ...is a pretty well-made, authentic bit of sci-fi, with a great cast, script, unpredictable plot, etc.. Well worth a watch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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