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When NASA’s Europa Clipper aims to launch its much-anticipated mission to an icy moon in October, the spacecraft will have a unique design etched with names, poetry and artwork to symbolize humanity.
The US space agency has a long history of launching missions with meaningful names and designs, including the Voyager probes, the Perseverance Rover and Parker Solar Probe. Now, it’s up to Europa Clipper to continue the tradition of designing transportation that reflects why people are driven to explore the cosmos.
This latest mission is aimed at Jupiter’s moon Europa, one of many lunar ocean worlds that are considered the best places to search for life beyond Earth. Scientists estimate that there is a global ocean with more than twice the water in the Earth’s oceans under Europa’s thick icy shell. The Earth’s oceans contain about 321 million cubic miles (1.3 billion cubic kilometers) of water, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Decorated on both sides and made of the rare metal tantalum, the triangular plate will seal the spacecraft’s sensitive electronics inside a dome to protect them from Jupiter’s harsh radiation.
Inside the dome is a silicon microchip stenciled with more than 2.6 million names entered by the public. The microchip is at the center of a design depicting a bottle floating within the orbit of Jupiter and its moons to symbolize that it acts as a cosmic message in a bottle.
Technicians at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used electron beams to stencil the names at a size less than the width of a human hair.
Underneath the bottle is the original poem “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” by US poet laureate Ada Limón, etched in her handwriting, along with a portrait of Arizona State planetary science pioneer Ron Greeley, who lasts. A university professor who played a vital role in laying the foundations for the development of a mission to Europa.
The side of the plate facing the inside of the dome also includes an etching of the Drake Equation, developed in 1961 by the late astronomer Frank Drake of the University of California Santa Cruz to estimate the possibility of finding advanced life along out of the World. The equation remains an important part of astrobiological research as scientists search for evidence of life beyond our planet.
On the outside of the plate are waveforms, or visual representations of sound waves, representing the word “water” in 103 languages around the world. At the heart of the spiral is a symbol that means “water” in American Sign Language. The audio of the spoken languages collected by linguists for NASA is available on its website.
Planetary inheritance
Early NASA probes such as Pioneer 10 and Voyager have continued to inspire the artwork aboard other planetary science missions.
When NASA’s twin Voyager probes took off to explore the solar system just weeks apart in 1977, they carried identical golden records designed to be the first recorded interstellar message from humanity to possible intelligent life. in the cosmos. The recordings were both audio-visual and visual, which aimed to capture the diversity of life and culture of the World, including blessings in 59 human languages and 115 images of life.
The Europa Clipper plate was designed with that spirit in mind to honor the potential connection between the moon’s oceans and Earth’s oceans, according to NASA.
“The material and design of the Europa Clipper dome plate is brimming with meaning,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said in a statement. “The plate combines the best that humanity has to offer across the globe – science, technology, education, art and mathematics. The message of the connection through water, which is essential to all life as we know it, perfectly represents the connection of the Earth to this ocean world that we are trying to explore.”
After a 1.6 billion mile (2.6 billion kilometer) journey to Europa, Europa Clipper will spend the next few years flying by the ice-covered moon to see if the ocean beneath could support life. Europa Clipper is set to make nearly 50 flybys of Europa, coming within 16 miles (25.7 kilometers) above its thick icy crust to survey nearly all of that moon.
The spacecraft will use cameras, a spectrometer, an ice-penetrating radar and a thermal device to understand how the moon formed and whether life can exist on icy ocean life.
“We’ve packed a lot of thought and inspiration into this plate design, as we have into this mission itself,” Robert Pappalardo, project scientist at JPL, said in a statement. “It’s been a decades-long journey, and we can’t wait to see what Europa Clipper shows us in this aquatic world.”
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