Spacecraft Makers: Introducing Europa Clipper

Join team members from NASA’s Europa Clipper mission behind the scenes in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to learn about the design of this spacecraft that will visit Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. Europa Clipper Project Manager Jordan Evans and Deputy Science Manager Trina Ray explain how scientists’ questions translate into hardware, and they provide an update on the build in JPL’s clean room, pointing out hardware that will connect the spacecraft to the rocket, the main communication antenna, and cameras. Spacecraft Makers is a video series that takes audiences behind the scenes to learn more about how space missions, like Europa Clipper, come together. Europa Clipper will explore this icy moon of Jupiter to see if there are conditions suitable for life. The spacecraft needs to be hardy enough to survive a 1.6-billion-mile, six-year journey to Jupiter – and sophisticated enough to perform a detailed science investigation of Europa once it arrives at the Jupiter system in 2030. Europa Clipper is expected to launch in October 2024 from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Viewers also can watch a 24-hour live feed of the spacecraft in the clean room here. For more information on the mission go to: https://europa.nasa.gov/. For more information on this video series which focuses on how space missions come together visit XXXXX. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

What is said in the film

NASA's Europa Clipper will explore an icy moon of Jupiter to see if there are conditions that could support life. Let's head into the Spacecraft Assembly Facility behind me to see how the mission is coming together. I'm Raquel Villanueva here today with Jordan Evans and Trina Ray. Before we can head inside, there is one more step we need to take. We have to gown up.

We have to protect the spacecraft from us. All the particles that might fall off of us. So we have to cover our hair, we have to not wear makeup, no perfume. The Europa Clipper mission is a spacecraft that we're sending to the Jupiter system. It's going to orbit Jupiter, but fly by the moon, Europa.

And it's a moon that is, we think has an ocean underneath. And we want to investigate that. We'll be in this room until we ship to the Kennedy Space Center for our launch campaign in the late spring of next year, 2024. During that time, it'll make a couple of trips out of this building for testing. We have so many questions about Europa.

We have an icy crust with an ocean underneath, and the water that's in that ocean has been sort of, you know, churning and stewing for like 4 billion years. And so we've got a lot of questions to try to answer about the interior or about the geology or about the composition. To answer those scientific questions. Obviously, we have to get to Europa first. So one of the key elements of the spacecraft design is being able to bolt the spacecraft onto the rocket that will give us the energy we need to get to Jupiter.

And then once we're at Jupiter, being able to generate electric power to accommodate our very large solar panels and our very large high gain antenna to send that science data back to Earth. And all of that has to be done with materials that are safe for the immense radiation environment at Europa. Jordan, what are we looking at here? Starting at the far end, that's the interface of the launch vehicle. That's where we bolt Europa Clipper to the Falcon heavy rocket.

And from there, that cylindrical portion, inside there are propulsion tanks. There's that red cover which is protecting some sensitive communications electronics, where our large high gain antenna mounts. And then you'll see there's some paper on the outside. And those are actually patterns for the sewing that's required on our thermal blankets. Thermal blankets with the right optical properties to maintain the temperatures of the vehicle, as well as provide protection from micrometeorites.

Trina, can you kind of tell us more about the instruments that we can see here? We don't have all of our instruments onboard yet, but what we do have is over here, kind of around this way, are three of our cameras there installed on that far piece right there. We have cameras that operate in the visible. We have cameras that operate in the infrared, cameras that operate in the ultraviolet. Those all look at Europa at the same time, just in different wavelengths.

But then we also have a thermal imager. So let's think of that as like the like the night vision goggles. Right. So what you're looking for there is a thermal signature. So imagine you have this ocean that's churning away and it makes the ice right above it a little bit warm.

And so the thermal imager will be able to tell you that. And seeing the spacecraft up close, I just want to know, what does this mission mean to the both of you? It represents the hundreds of thousands, the millions of hours of the dedicated engineers and technicians and scientists. I treasure my job every day I come to work and I'm like, we're going to do our part. We're going to answer these questions, but we're going to ask the next questions for the next generation to be inspired and to build their spacecraft and go.

Thanks for watching Spacecraft Makers. If you have any questions about Europa Clipper or want to see something in the series, let us know in the comments.

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