Europa Clipper Development, Build And Prelaunch Activities Options

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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.

As a reminder, please carefully review rule 1.3 before commenting. In fact, please review all of them. Thanks!


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.)

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One thing that really caught my notice is that they're expecting 0.5m resolution of Europa at selected times/passes. He used the phrase "HiRISE-quality". Was rather surprised by that; I'm assuming that means that at least some of the flyby relative velocities are fairly low.

Characterization of surface roughness at that scale will be enormously helpful for future lander mission planning, of course. I wonder if they'll be able to achieve something similar during the Ganymede & Callisto flybys?

[antipode]

Oh dear, according to the latest PEN newsletter, the ICEMAG Europa interior characterisation instrument has been terminated due to cost overruns.

P

[nprev]

Do you have a link to that, Antipode? Didn't find anything via a quick Google.

[antipode]

PLANETARY EXPLORATION NEWSLETTER
Volume 13, Number 10 (March 5, 2019)

PEN Website: http://planetarynews.org

P

[nprev]

Thank you.

Bad news indeed. However, it does seem that the mission will likely still include a magnetometer albeit a less complex (and capable) instrument, perhaps a flight spare of some sort from another project.

This is not without precedent; seems to happen more often than not for most missions, actually. Hopefully the legendary ingenuity of NASA will find a way forward.

[Explorer1]

Too bad; luckily, JUICE will definitely carry a magnetometer too (called J-MAG).

[MahFL]

PLANETARY EXPLORATION NEWSLETTER
Volume 13, Number 10 (March 5, 2019)

PEN Website: http://planetarynews.org

P

300% cost increase...

[Bjorn Jonsson]

I noticed that according to the PEN newsletter, a simpler, less complex magnetometer will be included on Europa Clipper if possible. Hopefully this is possible since including a magnetometer is really important for exploring Europa properly (the subsurface ocean in particular).

[JRehling]

Since JUICE and EC will run concurrently, it would be particularly nice to have them both operating at the same time, in the event that both of them might make a close Europa pass at the same time. A magnetic field inside another magnetic field is a complex beast, and getting measurements along two trajectories at once would be a bonus.

JUICE won't make that many passes by Europa, so it can't possibly replace the science value that a magnetometer on EC would offer.

I'm still smarting over the fact that Dawn had its magnetometer downscoped away.

[Guest_Steve5304_*]

This isn't Clipper. That's the Euro mission.


And it looks like the Russian's and Chinese may very well send their own vessel also. So possible 3 missions to Europa, Ganymede during the 2030's.

[JRehling]

The latest review of Europa Clipper and Europa Lander paints a less-than-rosy picture of the status of each.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/wit...a-s-back-burner

(This article is more about the Lander than the Clipper, so the match with this forum is ~40%.)

These sagas go back and forth as we all know, but it seems like postponement is a solid possibility for the Clipper and more than likely for the Lander.

[vjkane]

The latest review of Europa Clipper and Europa Lander paints a less-than-rosy picture of the status of each.

A friend of mine in the professional space community pointed out to me that these reports often document problems well known to the development teams. Often by the time the reports are published, project management is well toward solving the problem

[Jaro_in_Montreal]

Yaay !!

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/europa-clipper...-moon-confirmed