Europa Clipper Development, Build And Prelaunch Activities Options

[nprev]

The spacecraft has entered its preliminary design review phase, so I think it's time to begin discussion of what promises to be a fascinating journey to one of the most interesting destinations in the Solar System. Dr. Robert Pappalardo, the mission's chief scientist, delivered an overview of Europa as well as a top-level description of instrumentation and objectives during a talk tonight at the Griffith Observatory as part of their monthly "All Space Considered" series, so that serves as a good starting point. His presentation starts at 29:35.

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Europa Clipper Presentation (29:35)

[vjkane]

Dr. Robert Pappalardo, the mission's chief scientist, delivered an overview of Europa as well as a top-level description of instrumentation and objectives during a talk tonight at the Griffith Observatory as part of their monthly "All Space Considered" series, so that serves as a good starting point. His presentation starts at 29:35.

Europa Clipper Presentation (29:35)

I listened to the talk given yesterday by Bob Pappalardo, project scientist for the Clipper mission, at the Griffith Observatory. In general, the talk was aimed at the general public and did not go into many details. There were some tidbits that were new to me:

He stated that the project is keeping the spacecraft compatible with launch by the Delta IV Heavy, Falcon Heavy, and SLS. The former two would result in cruises of nearly 8 years, the latter 2 years.

He stated that the mission will do a number of Callisto and Ganymede flybys when they flip the orbit to go from flybys on the anti-Jovian hemisphere to the pro-Jovian hemisphere. (I've also read that there will be several flybys of these moons early in the mission as they crank down the orbit for to shorten the period and lower the periapsis to Europa's orbit.)

He also stated that the likely limiting factor for the mission would be the decay of power from the solar cells as they are degraded by the radiation. (Which brings up the idea to me that at some point they could raise the periapsis of the orbit out of the intense radiation field and become a Jovian system observatory for some period. ESA's JUICE mission will orbit Ganymede and do a number of Callisto flybys. Don't know the science return for additional flybys of these moons by the Clipper spacecraft late in its mission.)

The current disposal plan is to dump the spacecraft into Jupiter, although crashing the craft onto Ganymede or Callisto remains a possibility. (From a previous public lecture, another Clipper manager said his favorite idea was to crash into Io, collecting data on the way in. Don't know if that remains a feasible option.)