Marrakesh, 4 Mar. (Maroc-Actu) –
NASA has begun assembly of the Clipper spacecraft, a mission to orbit Europa, Jupiter’s icy satellite, scheduled for launch in 2024.
The Clipper will be as large as an SUV type vehicle. with solar panels long enough to cover a basketball courtwhich will provide solar energy to power the spacecraft during its journey.
Before the end of the year, most of the flight hardware, including a suite of nine scientific instruments, should be completed.
The main body of the spacecraft is a giant propulsion module 3 meters high.designed and built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), with assistance from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The module, complete with electronics, radios, wiring, and propulsion subsystem, will ship to JPL this spring. Clipper’s 3-meter-wide high-gain antenna will also arrive at the lab soon.
“We are moving to the phase where we see all the pieces coming together to form a system of flight,” the Home Secretary said. in a statement Jan Chodas, Mission Project Manager, JPL. “It will be very exciting to see the hardware, flight software and instruments integrated and tested. For me, this is the next level of discovery. We are going to learn how the system we designed will actually work. »
Europa, which scientists believe houses an internal ocean which contains twice as much water as all of the Earth’s oceans combined, may currently possess the conditions necessary for life. Clipper will orbit Jupiter and make several close flybys of Europa to collect data on the moon’s atmosphere, surface and interior. Its sophisticated payload will study everything from the depth and salinity of the ocean, to the thickness of the ice crust, to the characteristics of potential plumes that might spew groundwater into space. .
The first scientific instrument to be completed was delivered to JPL last week by a team from the Southwest Research Institute. The website spectrographe ultraviolet, called Europa-UVS, will look for signs of plumes on Europa’s surface. The instrument collects ultraviolet light and then separates the wavelengths of that light to help determine the composition of the moon’s surface and gases in the atmosphere.
When each instrument arrives at JPL, it will be integrated into the spacecraft and retested. Engineers must ensure instruments can communicate with the flight computer, spacecraft software and power subsystem.
Once all components have been integrated to form the large flight system, Clipper will be transferred to JPL’s massive thermal vacuum chamber for testing simulating the harsh environment of deep space. Intense vibration testing will also be performed to ensure the spacecraft can withstand the rigors of launch. It will then be transported to Cape Canaveral for a scheduled launch in October 2024.
