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Europa Clipper Development, Build And Prelaunch Activities
Jaro_in_Montreal
post Aug 20 2019, 04:31 PM
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BTW, I remember reading a detailed Europa Clipper mission proposal somewhere, but now I can't find it in my files.
Anybody here remember where it was posted?
A quick Google search came up empty.
Thnx
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JRehling
post Aug 21 2019, 02:41 AM
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Maybe this is the one you were thinking of?

https://smd-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/science-r...S_Sept_2016.pdf

One thing that catches my eye is that virtually all of Europa would be mapped at better than 30m per pixel with a median of about 9m per pixel. Due to orbital mechanics that are easy to visualize (flybys just inside or outside of Europa's orbit), there is a rough 180° periodicity in the coverage with the sub-jovian and anti-jovian regions imaged with the best resolution and the leading and trailing regions imaged with the worst resolution. This is approximately 10 times higher resolution than Viking coverage of Mars.
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nprev
post Oct 23 2019, 06:23 AM
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Panel discussion tomorrow (23 Oct 19) about Clipper featuring Bob Pappalardo and TPS CEO Bill Nye, 1030 US Pacific Daylight Time, 1730 GMT. NASA TV link.


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Explorer1
post Apr 22 2021, 08:33 PM
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I didn't want to start a new topic in the book subforum, but I wanted to let everyone know about 'The Mission' by David Brown; a fantastic book about the long history of Europa missions that recently released and everything that led up to the Europa Clipper's development so far. I'm only in chapter 4 of the audio version, but it's filled with all sorts of details on JIMO and previous proposals, as well as the nitty-gritty scientists, bureaucrats, politicians, (as well as some some cameos by posters on this very forum)! I had never known the origin of OPAG and MEPAG, the various rivalries, and the constant competition for scarce dollars.
The author has done quite a bit of science writing on space missions, and the prose is a good mix of details that will interest both experts and amateurs. It really emphasizes the long slog before even the first physical part of a probe destined for space is machined. I think there will be plenty new even to the users of UMSF.
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mcaplinger
post Apr 22 2021, 08:53 PM
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QUOTE (Explorer1 @ Apr 22 2021, 12:33 PM) *
I wanted to let everyone know about 'The Mission' by David Brown; a fantastic book about the long history of Europa missions...

Since I was on a number of teams for the 3 or 4 precursor missions and on a losing team for Clipper itself, I found that the book omitted all of the interesting details about those competitions (few of which, I expect, will ever be public). Not a surprise, since history is written by the winners...


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JRehling
post Apr 23 2021, 12:12 AM
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Richard Greenberg's books about the science of Europa are extremely lively, documenting some passionate disagreements, to put it mildly. I suspect that the rivalries in engineering a Europa mission are mainly about different issues, not necessarily scientific ones, but it seems like there has to be some aspect of the thin-ice vs thick-ice theories coming into play, at least during the ~2002-2014 era. But I am only on the outside looking in.
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scalbers
post May 24 2021, 07:54 PM
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Nice talk by Bob Pappalardo on Europa Clipper was presented on May 12, and can be watched on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZMZuiiaAmQ&t=4s


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volcanopele
post Jul 23 2021, 08:45 PM
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Europa Clipper now has a launch vehicle: a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Launch is now set for October 2024.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-awa...clipper-mission


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stevesliva
post Jul 26 2021, 04:29 AM
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QUOTE (volcanopele @ Jul 23 2021, 03:45 PM) *
Europa Clipper now has a launch vehicle: a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.


QUOTE
The total contract award amount for launch services is approximately $178 million.


ohmy.gif

Should go back to launching in pairs for this price.
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djellison
post Jul 26 2021, 05:07 AM
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QUOTE (stevesliva @ Jul 25 2021, 08:29 PM) *
Should go back to launching in pairs for this price.


The rocket isn't the expensive part. For this mission it's less than 5% of the budget.
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Explorer1
post Jul 27 2021, 12:19 AM
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$178 million is pocket change compared with SLS anyway. Massive savings by any measures (I could say more about SLS, but the p-word would be involved)....

Having a launch vehicle finalized is a big milestone; will be an impressive sight!
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StargazeInWonder
post Feb 13 2022, 11:07 PM
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This description of the Europa Clipper radar instrument, REASON, has a date of 2015, but seems to remain valid:

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/meetings/aug2.../8_f_REASON.pdf

There is good reason to believe that the icy shell will have a fair degree of global consistency for depth and structure, with local exceptions. The radar campaign of Europa Clipper will not map Europa's surface comprehensively, but rather provide a partial grid of widely-separated tracks, with good vertical resolution along those tracks. This should provide excellent coverage of the global parameters for the shell's structure, surface texture, and – if existing conceptions of the shell's
depth and REASON's performance hold – thickness. If exceptions to the global trends (eg, pockets of liquid water closer to the surface) are not very rare, then the grid of ground tracks will intersect them, sampling them occasionally. I guess if there's an extended mission, there would be high priority on additional ground tracks to target areas of suspected interest that were missed or grazed during the main mission. The coverage map in the linked paper shows that at least in many locations the coverage will be pretty dense. Amusingly, the ground tracks look quite similar in distribution to the linea features around longitude 225W and elsewhere, so hopefully we don't end up just missing something of interest if the ground tracks remain parallel to geological features for thousands of km, just missing them along the entire length.
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scalbers
post Sep 22 2023, 09:47 PM
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Live video stream of Europa Clipper assembly:

https://europa.nasa.gov/spacecraft/assembly/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk0X3Sh2gIE


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