Europa Clipper

Model af Europa Clipper rumfartøjet

Europa Clipper (tidligere kendt som Europa Multiple Flyby Mission) er en rumsonde udviklet af NASA til at studere månen Europa, en af Jupiters galilæiske måner. Europa Clipper blev opsendt den 14. oktober 2024 og forventes at ankomme i Jupiter-systemet i 2030. Rumfartøjet vil derefter udføre en række flyvninger omkring Europa, mens det er i kredsløb om Jupiter.[1][2] Rumfartøjet det hidtil største, der er benyttet af NASA til planetariske missioner.[3]

Europa Clipper vil udføre undersøgelser som opfølgning til dem, der blev foretaget af Galileo-rumfartøjet i løbet af dets otte år (1995-2003) i Jupiter-kredsløb, hvilket indikerede eksistensen af et underjordisk hav under Europas isskorpe. Planer om at sende et rumfartøj til Europa blev oprindeligt udtænkt med projekter som Europa Orbiter og Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, hvor et rumfartøj ville blive sendt i kredsløb om Europa. Men på grund af de negative konsekvenser af stråling fra Jupiters magnetosfære under kredsløbet om Europa, blev det i stedet besluttet at sende et rumfartøj i et elliptisk kredsløb omkring Jupiter og under dette kredsløb foretage 44 tætte forbiflyvninger af Europa. Missionen begyndte som et fælles projekt mellem Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) og Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), og fartøjet blev konstrueret til at medføre ni instrumenter designet af JPL, APL, Southwest Research Institute, University of Texas i Austin, Arizona State University og University of Colorado Boulder. Europa Clipper supplerer ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, der blev opsendt i 2023, som vil flyve forbi Europa to gange og forbi en anden af Jupiters måner, Callisto flere gange, før den bevæger sig i kredsløb om månen Ganymedes.

Europa Clipper blev opsendt den 14. oktober 2024 ombord på en SpaceX løfteraket, Falcon Heavy.[4] Rumfartøjet vil bruge tyngdekraftsassistance fra Mars i februar 2025 og fra Jorden i december 2026, inden det ankommer til Europa i april 2030.[5]

Mål

Overfladen på månen Europa, der skal udforskes af rumfartøjet

Europa Clippers mål er at udforske Europa, undersøge mulighederne for liv under månens iskappe og kortlægge mulighederne for et landingssted for den foreslåede Europa Lander.[6][7] Efterforskningen er fokuseret på klarlægge de tre hovedkrav til liv: flydende vand, kemi og energi.[8] Specifikt er målene at studere:[9]

  • Iskappe og hav: Bekræfte eksistensen og karakteren af vandet i og under isen, og undersøge processerne for transport af stoffer mellem overflade, is og ocean.
  • Sammensætning: Sammensætningen og fordelingen af centrale substanser i oceanet.
  • Geologi: Karakteristika og dannelse af strukturer i overfladen herunder lokaliteter med nyere eller nuværende aktivitet.

Referencer

  1. ^ Clark, Stuart (5. marts 2023). "'It's like finding needles in a haystack': the mission to discover if Jupiter's moons support life". The Guardian. Arkiveret fra originalen 7. marts 2023. Hentet 7. marts 2023.
  2. ^ King, Lucinda; Conversation, The. "If life exists on Jupiter's moon Europa, scientists might soon be able to detect it". phys.org (engelsk). Arkiveret fra originalen 8. april 2024. Hentet 2024-04-08.
  3. ^ "How our vision of Europa's habitability is changing" (amerikansk engelsk). 2024-04-19. Arkiveret fra originalen 24. april 2024. Hentet 2024-04-24.
  4. ^ "NASA's Europa Clipper launches aboard SpaceX rocket, bound for Jupiter's icy ocean moon". Los Angeles Times. 2024-10-14. Hentet 2024-10-14.
  5. ^ Foust, Jeff (10. februar 2021). "NASA to use commercial launch vehicle for Europa Clipper". SpaceNews. Arkiveret fra originalen 16. februar 2021. Hentet 10. februar 2021.
  6. ^ Kane, Van (5. januar 2016). "A Lander for NASA's Europa Mission". The Planetary Society. Arkiveret fra originalen 8. januar 2016. Hentet 5. januar 2016.
  7. ^ Pappalardo, Robert T.; Vance, S.; Bagenal, F.; Bills, B.G.; Blaney, D.L.; Blankenship, D.D.; Brinckerhoff, W.B.; Connerney, J.E.P.; Hand, K.P.; Hoehler, T.M.; Leisner, J.S.; Kurth, W.S.; McGrath, M.A.; Mellon, M.T.; Moore, J.M. (2013). "Science Potential from a Europa Lander" (PDF). Astrobiology. 13 (8): 740-773. Bibcode:2013AsBio..13..740P. doi:10.1089/ast.2013.1003. PMID 23924246. S2CID 10522270. Arkiveret fra originalen 10. oktober 2022. Hentet 1. oktober 2019.
  8. ^ 2017 IEEE Aerospace Conference. 2017 IEEE Aerospace Conference. ISBN 978-1-5090-1613-6.
  9. ^ Clipper summary

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Shuttle.svg
A drawing of NASA's Space Shuttle Challenger. Image provided by Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California. See [1], specifically EG-0076-04.eps.
Europa Clipper spacecraft model.png
Transparent background version of the Europa Clipper spacecraft rendering, per the official JPL website.
Jupiter.jpg
Original Caption Released with Image: This processed color image of Jupiter was produced in 1990 by the U.S. Geological Survey from a Voyager 2 image captured in 1979. The colors have been enhanced to bring out detail. Zones of light-colored, ascending clouds alternate with bands of dark, descending clouds. The clouds travel around the planet in alternating eastward and westward belts at speeds of up to 540 kilometers per hour. Tremendous storms as big as Earthly continents surge around the planet. The Great Red Spot (oval shape toward the lower-left) is an enormous anticyclonic storm that drifts along its belt, eventually circling the entire planet.
PIA19048 realistic color Europa mosaic edited.jpg

Uploader's notes: the original NASA TIFF image has been modified by increasing linear pixel dimensions by a factor of 1.6 (to bring out fine detail), sharpening and conversion to JPEG format.

Original caption released with image:
The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. This is the color view of Europa from Galileo that shows the largest portion of the moon's surface at the highest resolution.

The view was previously released as a mosaic with lower resolution and strongly enhanced color (see PIA02590). To create this new version, the images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye.

The scene shows the stunning diversity of Europa's surface geology. Long, linear cracks and ridges crisscross the surface, interrupted by regions of disrupted terrain where the surface ice crust has been broken up and re-frozen into new patterns.

Color variations across the surface are associated with differences in geologic feature type and location. For example, areas that appear blue or white contain relatively pure water ice, while reddish and brownish areas include non-ice components in higher concentrations. The polar regions, visible at the left and right of this view, are noticeably bluer than the more equatorial latitudes, which look more white. This color variation is thought to be due to differences in ice grain size in the two locations.

Images taken through near-infrared, green and violet filters have been combined to produce this view. The images have been corrected for light scattered outside of the image, to provide a color correction that is calibrated by wavelength. Gaps in the images have been filled with simulated color based on the color of nearby surface areas with similar terrain types.

This global color view consists of images acquired by the Galileo Solid-State Imaging (SSI) experiment on the spacecraft's first and fourteenth orbits through the Jupiter system, in 1995 and 1998, respectively. Image scale is 2 miles (1.6 kilometers) per pixel. North on Europa is at right.

The Galileo mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

Additional information about Galileo and its discoveries is available on the Galileo mission home page at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo/. More information about Europa is available at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa.