SE Valley Times

The Europa Clipper spacecraft has successfully journeyed from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Over the summer, the spacecraft will prepare for launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, currently scheduled for October. Arizona State University graduates and scientists have significant roles in the mission.

Europa Clipper is a robotic, solar-powered spacecraft designed to explore Jupiter's icy moon Europa and investigate whether conditions there could support life. "We're trying to understand whether Europa could be a place where simple life forms might exist as microbial life. Could it exist in an ocean beneath a layer of ice?" says ASU alumnus Robert Pappalardo, a project scientist for the Europa Clipper mission. "At Europa, we want to understand Europa's interior, its geology and its composition, and whether it's active."

Once deployed, the spacecraft is planned to conduct approximately 50 flybys of Europa while sending data back to Earth. Pappalardo earned his PhD through ASU’s department of geological sciences, now known as the School of Earth and Space Exploration.

The Europa Clipper spacecraft is equipped with two cameras and several spectrometers to take photos and produce compositional maps of Europa's surface. The Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS) is led by principal investigator Philip Christensen, a Regents Professor in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.

"E-THEMIS is an infrared camera that works like night-vision goggles," says Christensen. "And the hotter things are, the more infrared light they give off. Europa is covered with these fractures, and we think the ice is moving around similar to the Arctic ice on Earth."

Differences in temperatures of the surface features of Europa could be revealed by E-THEMIS, potentially leading to a better understanding of what occurs above and below the moon’s top layers.

Both Pappalardo and Christensen developed as scientists under the mentorship of Ron Greeley, a professor who taught space and geosciences at ASU before his death in 2011. "Ron led the science definition teams to determine what science should be done with a dedicated mission to Europa," says Pappalardo. "That effort became the Europa Clipper."

The spacecraft’s vault plate covers and protects sensitive parts of its electronics; it bears Greeley’s name and image and has been bolted in place by NASA engineers for its journey to Europa.

The trip to Jupiter will take about five and a half years with a primary science mission planned to last around four years. The overall mission life expectancy spans ten years.

The launch period for Europa Clipper starts on Oct. 10. It will be NASA's largest spacecraft ever developed for a planetary mission.