NASA’s Europa Clipper Radar Instrument Proves Itself at Mars

All instructed, engineers had been capable of acquire 60 gigabytes of wealthy information from the instrument. Almost instantly, they might inform REASON was working nicely. The flight crew scheduled the complete dataset to obtain, beginning in mid-May. Scientists relished the chance over the following couple of months to look at the data intimately and examine notes.

“The engineers were excited that their test worked so perfectly,” stated JPL’s Trina Ray, Europa Clipper deputy science supervisor. “All of us who had worked so hard to make this test happen — and the scientists seeing the data for the first time — were ecstatic, saying, ‘Oh, look at this! Oh, look at that!’ Now, the science team is getting a head start on learning how to process the data and understand the instrument’s behavior compared to models. They are exercising those muscles just like they will out at Europa.”

Europa Clipper’s complete journey to succeed in the icy moon can be about 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) and consists of yet another gravity help — utilizing Earth — in 2026. The spacecraft is at present about 280 million miles (450 million kilometers) from Earth.

More About Europa Clipper

Europa Clipper’s three primary science goals are to find out the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its interactions with the ocean beneath, to research its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will assist scientists higher perceive the astrobiological potential for liveable worlds past our planet.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California leads the event of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the principle spacecraft physique in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA Marshall executes program administration of the Europa Clipper mission. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based mostly at NASA Kennedy, managed the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft. The REASON radar investigation is led by the University of Texas at Austin.

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