As Europa Clipper has wound its way through the difficult processes of the design of the mission, design of the space probe itself, selection of the ride to space and so on, we've talked briefly about the mission at various steps along the way. Today at Space.com, I find a link to an important update from NASA and the JPL Europa Clipper has had all of its instruments integrated into the spacecraft.
With less than nine months remaining in the countdown to launch, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission has passed a major milestone: Its science instruments have been added to the massive spacecraft, which is being assembled at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The mission was originally intended to be launched by the SLS, using its Exploration Upper Stage. When you refer to a part of SLS, it's pretty much always true to add "has been delayed" and the EUS has never flown. I'm not sure any hardware has actually been built. By 2019 NASA had asked the White House to get congress to move Europa Clipper to a Falcon Heavy to save a lot of money - a special law had been passed by congress mandating the mission be flown by SLS so it had to be addressed that way. The complete mission on a Falcon Heavy would cost NASA less than two of the four RS-25 first stage engines of the SLS.
The White House points out that a private sector rocket, such as the Falcon Heavy, could get the Europa mission to the Jovian moon it's targeting although the mission would take longer. The trade off is that the Falcon Heavy would save NASA $700 Million, which could be used on other priorities, and moving the mission off the SLS would save one of those rockets for the Artemis moon missions. When you combine the savings of launch cost for the Europa probe with having an "extra" SLS booster available, the savings climb to $1.5 Billion.
Next Spaceflight shows a currently scheduled launch date of October 10 at 11:51 AM EST for the Europa Clipper mission.
[T]he spacecraft will head to Jupiter’s ice-encased moon Europa, where a salty ocean beneath the frozen surface may hold conditions suitable for life. Europa Clipper won’t be landing; rather, after arriving at the Jupiter system in 2030, the spacecraft will orbit Jupiter for four years, performing 49 flybys of Europa and using its powerful suite of nine science instruments to investigate the moon’s potential as a habitable environment.
It doesn't say what month in 2030 the Clipper arrives at Europa, but let's just say six years to get there.
NASA’s Europa Clipper, with all of its instruments installed, is visible in the clean room of High Bay 1 at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Jan. 19. The tent around the spacecraft was erected to support electromagnetic testing. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Both the
Space.com article
and the
NASA Europa mission article have lots of interesting overview-level descriptions of the
instruments. They're largely the same because the Space.com author largely
excerpted the NASA article.
Gee, too bad Falcon Heavy isn't human rated and could take over for most all of the SLS's missions. Until Starship comes on line, that is...
ReplyDeleteSavings of $1.5 billion. Think of what NASA could do with 15 extra SpaceX launches. No, strike that. Consider what Beans, SiGraybeard, Igor, Malatrope, the lovely Anonymous and the other readers of this blog could do with 15 SpaceX launches. Six years transit time is a long time. NASA will have to do something else during that time to justify their budgets. Not sure if rolling SLS around the parking lot for selfies is going to be enough.
ReplyDeleteWHY on God's Green Earth did the numbnuts on CONgress decide to use the SLS?
ReplyDeletePork?
SpaceX wasn't proven yet??
Well, they can change that now with little or no consequence - but I imagine the political consequences would be unbearable by The Old Guard...
Can't save money and time, now, can we? GAWD.
I think both of them. Pork and SpaceX being too new.
DeleteThey’re still there; the ones who are trying to go back to the old ways. Like that ex-administrator Michael Griffin we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
SLS is like the European Space Administration and Airbus. They're all giant work/welfare programs that occasionally produce a product. Usually late, has to be repaired, and any follow-up products are going to be redesigned, more expensive, much later late and so forth.
DeleteThe SLS, like the ARES system, was just a follow-on of Shuttle technology and shouldn't have been that hard to build and fly. NASA had done studies as to using shuttle tech. They did computer modelling. They did actual modelling. ARES was based upon early designs that were just updated, all assuming the use of a shuttle or mini-shuttle. Getting rid of the hang-on-the-side space planes actually simplified/simplifies designs, as the thrust is through the center of the stack, rather than offset.
Like, we should have been flying ARES within 2 years of starting. We should have been flying SLS within 2 years of starting. Again, because all of the tech was already there for SLS and most of the design work for ARES was already there.
This whole SLS system is a gigantic pork welfare program that should never ever ever been adopted.
Think of the money savings if we'd gone with Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, human rated them, and paid SpaceX to upgrade Falcon Heavy with 3 or 4 booster cores around a central core (which SpaceX thought about, hard, before transitioning to Starship.)