Month: August 2019

There are a number of places within our solar system where life may have come to pass – and indeed, may still exist – beyond the Earth. There’s Mars, Saturn’s massive moon Titan, and the so-called “icy world” moons, such as Neptune’s Triton, Saturn’s Enceladus, and Jupiter’s Europa, all of which may harbour sub-surface oceans between their icy crusts and solid interiors.

Of these moons, Enceladus has shown clear signs of activity relating to the existence of a sub-surface ocean: the ESA / NASA Cassini mission captured images of great plumes of water erupting from the moon’s south polar region, and the Cassini vehicle passed through this plumes towards the end of its mission to “taste” them, confirm they were predominantly water.

However, the icy world that has garnered the most interest in terms of detailed study remains Jupiter’s Europa. Currently, there are two missions being developed to probe Europa in greater detail than ever before: NASA’s Europa Clipper and ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE).

Europa Clipper has had something of an up-and-down ride. Originally, scientists wanted to send a vehicle to study all of the icy moons around Jupiter – Europa, Callisto and mighty Ganymede. However, the US $16 billion price tag for the mission (including vehicle development, launch and operation) was too high. It was scaled back to a more modest US $4.3 billion mission, the Europa Orbiter, which would have included a lander. Then it was scaled back again to a US $2 billion mission.

In 2014, the mission eventually morphed into the Europa Multiple Flyby mission: rather than placing a vehicle directly in orbit around Europa, this would put the vehicle in orbit around Jupiter  from where it would be able to make multiple fly-bys of Europa. This then became Europa Clipper – which has still suffered from attempts to axe it, surviving only because it has very strong support within the US Congress.

This support has allowed the mission to both receive continued funding and proceed through various design and review activities. As a part of this, on Monday, August 19th, 2019, NASA announced  that it had formally confirmed the mission can proceed to what is called Phase C, a process that will see the mission through the final spacecraft design and then on to assembly and testing.

We are all excited about the decision that moves the Europa Clipper mission one key step closer to unlocking the mysteries of this ocean world.

– Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science

While Enceladus was the first moon where we positively witnessed plumes of water ice erupting from the surface (2005), evidence that similar outgassing may be occurring at Europa has been gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope. This information, gathered in the form of images, and data gathered by the magnetometer instrument carried by NASA’s Galileo space vehicle that surveyed Jupiter and his moons in the 1990s, offer the clearest indication that there is an ocean of water, possibly containing more than twice the volume of all the Earth’s oceans and sea combined, sitting beneath the surface ice on Europa.

The solar-powered craft  – solar power being a lot cheaper than nuclear RTGs – will carry a total of nine primary science instruments, with eight confirmed as being:

• The Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System  (E-Themis) will provide high spatial resolution, multi-spectral imaging of Europa in the mid and far infra-red bands to help detect active sites, such as potential vents erupting plumes of water into space.
• The Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MIS), an imaging near infra-red spectrometer that will probe the surface composition of Europa, identifying and mapping the distributions of organics (including amino acids and tholins), salts, acid hydrates, water ice phases, and other materials. Scientists hope to be able to relate the moon’s surface composition to the habitability of its ocean.
• The Europa Imaging System (EIS), a visible-spectrum wide and narrow angle camera instrument that will map most of Europa at 50 m (160 ft) resolution, and will provide images of selected surface areas at up to 0.5 m resolution.
• The Europa Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS) instrument will be able to detect small plumes of material ejected by Europa, and will provide valuable data about the composition and dynamics of the moon’s exosphere.
• The Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON), a dual-frequency ice penetrating radar instrument designed to characterise and sound Europa’s ice crust from the near-surface to the ocean, revealing the hidden structure of Europa’s ice shell and potential water pockets within.
• The Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) working in conjunction with a magnetometer, PIMS is key to determining Europa’s ice shell thickness, ocean depth, and salinity. PIMS will also probe the mechanisms responsible for weathering and releasing material from Europa’s surface into the atmosphere and ionosphere and understanding how Europa influences its local space environment and Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
• The Mass Spectrometer for Planetary Exploration (MASPEX) will determine the composition of the surface and subsurface ocean by measuring Europa’s extremely tenuous atmosphere and any surface materials ejected into space.
• The Surface Dust Mass Analyser (SUDA), a second mass spectrometer that will measure the composition of small solid particles ejected from Europa, providing the opportunity to directly sample the surface and potential plumes on low-altitude flybys. The instrument is capable of identifying traces of organic and inorganic compounds in the ice of ejecta.

The ninth instrument will be a magnetometer, although this has yet to be sourced – the dedicated instrument, called Interior Characterisation of Europa using Magnetometry (ICEMAG) was cancelled due to spiralling costs and development complications. It will be replaced by a more “off the shelf” system that will be less sensitive than ICEMAG, but the mission team are confident they can compensate for this be more frequent re-calibration operations during the mission.

Early concepts for a Europa mission – as noted above – included a lander – and possibly even a drilling mechanism and an automated submarine that could potentially be dropped under the ice and explore the ocean under it. These ideas were dropped – perhaps wisely – until more is known about the structure and thickness of the surface ice and exactly what lies beneath it. However, Europa Clipper has some additional payload capacity – around 250 kg – and NASA has been seeking ideas on what might be flown; some of the suggestions have included by a payload of supporting CubeSats or a small-scale lander.

While the Europa Clipper mission won’t actually orbit Europa, the multiple fly-bys will enable it to achieve almost global coverage of the moon, allowing for the widest amount of data to be gathered. This will be transmitted back to Earth in the 7-day periods between each close fly-by.

Currently, the mission launch date has yet to be finalised, and this in part depends on the selected launch vehicle. The preferred launcher is NASA’s upcoming Space Launch System (SLS). If used, this would see the mission launched in 2023, with the booster powerful enough to put Europa Clipper on a 3-year direct flight to Jupiter. However, there is no guarantee that SLS will be available in the proposed time frame, so NASA is also looking to use a commercial vehicle such as the SpaceX Falcon Heavy or the ULA Delta IV Heavy. Either of these would allow the mission to launch in 2022, but as they are less powerful than SLS, they would require Europa Clipper use 3 gravity assist manoeuvres, two at Earth and one at Venus, in order to send it on its way, increasing the transit time to Jupiter to 6 years.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: to explore Europa” →