Europa Clipper, the largest ship ever built by the POT for planetary exploration, successfully passed the final review and everything is ready for its launch on October 10, on a mission that will take it to orbit the frozen moon Europa, Jupiterand determine whether it can support life.
According to NASA’s report on Monday in a teleconference, the mission, which will take off from the Kennedy Space Center, in Floridawill cover 1.8 billion miles to Jupiter in 2030 to observe the moon Europa, which is believed to support life-supporting conditions beneath its surface: water, energy and chemistry.
In search of a new habitable world
This is an opportunity to explore “not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today, right now,” Curt Niebur, a scientist for NASA’s Europa Clipper program, highlighted at the press conference.
The mission, whose launch window opens on October 10, will involve the exploration and revelation of an “ocean world that is totally immersed and covered in an ocean of water completely different from anything we have seen before,” said Niebur, who described this planetary adventure as “epic.”
One of the main challenges the mission will face in its search for a potentially habitable world is enduring the harsh radiation environment of Jupiter and its moon Europa, which could affect the spacecraft’s transistors.
But experts remain confident that after rigorous testing and simulations, Jupiter’s radiation environment will not harm the systems and that, if they are affected by exposure, they can be repaired.
“It’s a very difficult space weather environment” in terms of radiation on Europa, as Jupiter is enveloped in more radiation than any other planet in our solar system and Europa is in the most exposed zone.said Jordan Evans, project manager for Europa Clipper.
The spacecraft will conduct 49 flybys of Europa during its four-year scientific mission and 10 scientific investigations to help understand Europa’s icy crust and the suspected ocean beneath it, said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Scientists have clarified that Europa Clipper’s voyage is “not a life-detection mission.” That is still “premature,” since the first thing to do is to detect elements on the icy moon that could support life as we know it, something that this mission hopes to confirm.
Over the next four years, the spacecraft will collect data on Europa’s icy crust, its hidden waters and its potential habitability.
“We are ready for Jupiter. We have completed NASA’s key review of the transistors on the spacecraft” to withstand the radiation environment. We have great confidence.”Evans said enthusiastically about this mission, on which some 4,000 experts from the United States and Europe have worked since it was officially approved in 2015.