by In October, NASA is scheduled to send a spacecraft to one of Jupiter’s 92 known moons, an icy marble named Europa. The main purpose of the probe? To help scientists determine whether Europe support life as we know it.
This robotic explorer is aptly named the Clip Europe, and, according to a release sent out by the agency on Tuesday (January 30), Clipper is looking pretty much ready for its cosmic journey. In short, all nine scientific instruments and telecommunications systems have been installed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California – along with my name (literally). But, that’s it a whole other story.
The technology haul includes instruments such as a mass spectrometer that will measure the mass-to-charge ratio of gas molecules on Europa, a surface dust analyzer and an imaging spectrometer that will study interactions between light and matter to map the moon’s ice, salts and organic molecules .
Related: Poem for Europa Clipper: Poet Laureate Ada Limón from the US reveals a flight on NASA’s Jupiter moon mission
Europa Clipper also has cameras on board, of course NASA says it will take wide-angle and narrow-angle shots of the moon’s icy surface – we can expect cool color pictures that will show us what it would be like to stand on the moon hundreds of millions of miles from our planet.
This is interesting because, apart from the obvious reasons, the discovery of new and detailed data about the surface of Europa may explain some shocking things that scientists have been seeing – such as a study that suggests that the Juno spacecraft has been detected by studying NASA’s Jupiter. recent activity in the region.
Speaking of which, because of that huge distance, Clipper is about to arrive on the Jupiter system no earlier than 2030. The spacecraft will orbit the giant planet for at least four years, performing 49 close flybys of Europa during that stretch.
“The instruments work hand in hand to answer our most pressing questions about Europa,” Robert Pappalardo, the mission’s project scientist, said in the statement. “We will learn what makes Europa tick, from the central and rocky interior to the ocean and ice shell to the very thin atmosphere and surrounding area. space environment.”
This mission feels so big because many scientists consider Europa to be one of the best places among us Solar system to seek evidence of alien life. It fulfills a ton of requirements that a world must have to be conducive to hosting life (at least as we know it), such as a salty underground ocean. In fact, scientists are so taken with the concept of icy moons with subsurface oceans in general that they have even begun planning how to someday create crypts that may “hole” beneath the frozen crust and allowing the crust itself to heal back up James Webb Space Telescope manage to get carbon evidence in the subsurface of the European sea.
In addition, there is a chance water vapor plumes coming from the icy surface of Europe. That bit is crucial for Europa Clipper, allowing it to get samples from the moon’s subsurface without even touching it. (Clipper will not land, but is collecting data for a possible future Mission Europe Lander.)
To that end, the spacecraft will have a few tricks up its sleeve (imagine what you will) to study that fascinating buried ocean. “A spectrograph will collect ultraviolet light to look for plumes and identify how the properties of the dynamic atmosphere change. time” Says the NASA release, adding that there will also be a magnetometer on board.
“That data will be critical to understanding the ocean, because the field is created, or sustained, by the electrical conductivity of the ocean’s salt as Europa moves through Jupiter’s strong point. magnetic field,” the release explains. “Working in conjunction with the magnetometer, it is an instrument that will analyze the plasma (charged particles) around Europa, which can distort magnetic fields.”
Meanwhile, a radar instrument will transmit radio waves to Europa’s surface, then those waves will look for specific features that may be located on the icy land — and possibly even within the ocean. Scientists can then measure how long it took for the waves to bounce back, and thus find out how long those features were. All in all, this should provide a pretty solid picture of what it looks like under Europa’s frozen cover. The antennas needed for this instrument will be placed on the craft later this year, the team says.
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— Europa: A guide to Jupiter’s icy moons
— NASA’s Juno spacecraft provide hints of activity on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa
— I’m sending my name to Jupiter’s moon Europa on a NASA spacecraft — and here’s why you should, too
There are also a few other tools that will add to the synergy on board the Europa Clipper; At the end of the day, the team says the key to this mission is for everything to work together and ultimately create the best map of the tantalizing ice world ever.
“The science is better if we get the views at the same time,” said Pappalardo. “What we’re trying to achieve is integration, so that we’re using all the instruments at any time to study Europa at once and we don’t have to trade between them.”
