BRIEF POST: Heads-up – NASA’s Europa Clipper mission runs into problems!

Graham writes …

The launch window for this mission to visit Jupiter’s moon Europa opens in October, but the engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are currently troubleshooting a serious issue with the Europa Clipper spacecraft. The objective of the mission is principally to determine whether Europa is a suitable place for life to develop, and as such it is generating a fair degree of excitement amongst astrobiologists.
 
Looking at Europa – a distant and cold, ice-covered world – it doesn’t look at all like an environment where life could flourish. However, in this case, appearances are deceptive. There is strong evidence that beneath the ice crust there is a warm water ocean, the heat being generated most likely by volcanic vents on Europa’s ocean bed.

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Jupiter as seen from the icy surface of its moon Europa. Credit: Ron Miller (artist) and Getty Images

The problem with the spacecraft lies with the transistor elements, which are essentially the building blocks of the micro-processors onboard. The Jupiter system, where Europa Clipper will operate, exposes the spacecraft to intense radiation similar to the Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts, but 50 times more intense. In order to survive this environment, the spacecraft’s electronics need to be ‘radiation-hardened’ to achieve its planned 4-year mission lifetime. However, the hardness rating for these elements turned out to be incorrect, and the transistors were found to fail before they should in laboratory tests. This poses a real headache for the engineers. There are currently two main avenues of investigation; firstly, the obvious route of replacing the transistors, and secondly to assess how long the existing integrated spacecraft could survive the radiation environment and whether it could achieve its mission in a shorter time scale. The second option would at least allow them to launch the currently integrated spacecraft in October, but with the prospect of a shorter mission at Jupiter. The first option however is also possible, but it would risk missing the 3-week launch window in October. There are however later launch opportunities, but not until 2025 and 2026.

An impression of a Europa fly-by of the Europa Clipper spacecraft. Credit: NASA.

So, everything is very much ‘up in the air’ at the moment, while the engineers mull over the options. I will most likely write a post on the various aspects of this fascinating mission in October – when hopefully we will know better what’s going on. I hope to ‘see’ you then, and in the meantime please see my main blog post for August below (… on water on Mars). Thereafter, I hand over to my co-author John for the September blog! God bless all.
 
Graham Swinerd
 
Southampton, UK
August 2024