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Paper No. 19-5
Presentation Time: 9:15 AM
EUROPA CLIPPER: TWO WEEKS TO LAUNCH!
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is planned to launch in October 2024 and enter Jupiter orbit in April 2030. Beginning in March 2031, it will collect science data while flying past Europa 49 times over four years at closest approach distances as low as 25 km. The mission will characterize Europa’s ice shell and ocean, study its composition, investigate its geology, and search for and characterize any current activity, including possible plumes. The mission’s objectives will be addressed using an advanced suite of complementary instruments. The remote sensing payload consists of the Europa Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS), Europa Imaging System (EIS), Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE), Europa Thermal Imaging System (E-THEMIS), and Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON). The in-situ instruments are the Europa Clipper Magnetometer (ECM), Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS), SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA), and MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX). Gravity and Radio Science (G/RS) will be achieved using the spacecraft's telecommunication system, and valuable scientific data for Radiation Monitoring (RadMon) will be collected by engineering sensors.
The goal of the Europa Clipper mission is to explore Europa to investigate its habitability. This will be achieved through accomplishing three science objectives:
- Characterize the ice shell and any subsurface water, including their heterogeneity, ocean properties, and the nature of surface-ice-ocean exchange.
- Understand the habitability of Europa’s ocean through composition and chemistry.
- Understand the formation of surface features, including sites of recent or current activity, and characterize high science interest localities.
The Europa Clipper team is documenting the mission, science plans, and instruments in a topical collection of the journal Space Science Reviews. The team has begun science observation planning for the selected tour to sketch out a Strategic Science Planning Guide, which details the science observation strategy. ESA’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft is expected to be in the Jovian system at the same time, so the two science teams have begun informal collaborations to consider synergistic science opportunities.