A RECONNAISSANCE STRATEGY FOR LANDING ON EUROPA, BASED ON EUROPA CLIPPER DATA

The upcoming Europa Clipper mission will study Europa’s surface and subsurface with remote sensing instruments to advance the overarching goal of exploring Europa to investigate its habitability. In addition, the Europa Clipper mission will provide an unprecedented opportunity to collect a reconnaissance dataset that can be used by any future landed mission to Europa. Such a landed mission would likely touch down at one of the close approach locations studied on Europa Clipper’s nearly 50 prime mission flybys. We describe the development of a reconnaissance strategy for a future landed mission to Europa, including requirements for science value and engineering safety. We outline how the data from each instrument in Europa Clipper’s payload could contribute to the overall reconnaissance process. The primary Europa Clipper dataset that can be used for reconnaissance is clear, color and stereo images, with additional contributions from IR spectral images; UV spectral imaging; thermal IR imaging; radar subsurface sounding, altimetry and reflectometry; dust and gas composition; and the magnetic field and plasma properties. We also derive lessons learned from the reconnaissance and landing site selection process from landing on and/or sampling other worlds such as the Moon, Mars, and small bodies. We describe how this work came together to define reconnaissance planning guidelines as part of the Europa Clipper Reconnaissance Focus Group. We also give an overview of how the Reconnaissance Focus Group is currently investigating the areas of Europa’s surface that will be observed by Europa Clipper with the fundamental observation parameters (i.e., architecture-independent parameters) that are required to identify a landing site and safely land using presently-available technologies, such as Terrain Relative Navigation. We also discuss how aspects of this approach could contribute to the development of future plans to land on other icy ocean worlds, such as Ceres and Enceladus.