NASA's Europa Clipper satellite to explore the named moon of Jupiter lifted off today at 12:06 PM EDT from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The launch, originally set for Thursday the 10th, was delayed by Hurricane Milton and days of cleanup.
The Falcon Heavy lifts off this morning (Oct. 14) from the Kennedy Space Center carrying NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft. Credit: Brandon Lindner
The skies were that clear and blue down here at "Castle Graybeard" as well, giving us good views through the two side boosters and the core booster being dropped sequentially. All three Falcon 9 cores were expended due to the size of the satellite and the needed trajectory using up all available fuel.
Europa Clipper is one of NASA’s most expensive science missions yet, with an estimated total lifecycle cost, including four years of operations after arriving at Jupiter in 2030, of $5.2 billion. It was one of the top priorities for flagship-class planetary science missions in decadal surveys by planetary scientists, building on proposals for Europa orbiters or flyby missions for at least two decades.
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The spacecraft weighed 5,700 kilograms fully fueled at launch (6.28 tons) and its solar arrays, when fully deployed, will make the spacecraft 30.5 meters (100 feet) long.
The solar arrays are a bit longer than an NBA basketball court, but recent
experience with solar arrays like that have been easier to live with than
nuclear power sources like the Radioisotope Thermal Generators that have
powered the Voyager satellites for 47 years.
While you'll see many places describing the mission as searching for life on the frigid moon, NASA/JPL won't use those that term.
The spacecraft will not search for life itself but rather see if the moon does have the right conditions to support life. “We continue to underscore that Europa Clipper is not actually a life-detection mission but a habitability investigation,” said Gina DiBraccio, acting director of NASA’s planetary science division, at an Oct. 13 briefing about the mission’s science.
“We want to understand whether Europa has the key ingredients to support life in its oceans,” said Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at the briefing.
Europa Clipper is equipped with nine dedicated instruments ranging from cameras and spectrometers to magnetometers, as well as a gravity and radio science experiment. Much like the predecessor Juno satellite which has been orbiting Jupiter for well over eight years, Europa Clipper will enter an orbit that loops around Europa, currently said to orbit 49 times. The flight to Europa is described as taking five years, but it's more like 5-1/2, with arrival expected in April 2030.
You probably recall that the controversy a few years ago was that Europa
Clipper had been set to fly on the SLS with its Exploration Upper Stage -
which has never flown. I don't know an expected date, but would guess it won't
fly until the probe is orbiting Europa and well into its
mission. Then there's the issue that
SLS missions are estimated to cost $4.4 billion
(WITHOUT the EUS); today's Falcon Heavy launch cost $178 million.
They're not exactly the same missions. SLS with the EUS could have gotten Europa Clipper to Europa faster - three years instead of 5-1/2 - if only it existed. And they could afford another $5 billion for the launch vehicle. The spacecraft will instead make a gravity assist flyby of Mars early next year and of Earth in late 2026 to arrive at Jupiter in April 2030.
5 years? Discovery One only took 18 months. ;)
ReplyDeleteSure, other rockets could get it there faster - if only there WAS one available to do the job. In the meantime, SpaceX is there, is reliable, and so it had to travel the slow, gravity-assist way. Plus, it's cheaper!
ReplyDeleteWadda want, egg in yer beer?
I'll bet that Europa Clipper gets to Jupiter before the SLS/EUS flies.
DeleteCan you imagine being the program manager for that? Option A, SLS with EUS: that'll be $5 billion and remember SLS has never met a contracted date or price. Option B, some small startup has a way to get us there which (at the time) had barely flown, for less than $200 million. The startup seems to be doing good stuff, though. Definitely one of those "is this a trick question?" moments.
If NASA had focused on things that get people excited about space in 1973 maybe we wouldn't have had the 50 year pause.
ReplyDeleteMissions like this are awesome and the type of people who like this blog are excited, but everyone else (of the few who noticed) will see yet another blahblahblah.
In an alternate universe, NASA focused on commercial prospects in the Apollo years, and the Ganymede colony is funding Europa studies.
It's funny that without Musk we'd still be in the 70s NASA mindset. One single man.
Part of that shutdown of NASA after Apollo was the Dems pushing for more money for social engineering and welfare and not on silly things like space programs and advanced passenger aircraft research.
DeleteThe boondoggle of the Shuttle program sucked any remaining goodness and money, like a parasite, from the manned programs of NASA.
Well, if NASA had coughed up maybe $500 million, SpaceX might have made a new 2nd stage that was longer, more powerful and able to lift more and faster.
ReplyDeleteStill, how much could Falcon Heavy lift that is within the current moon program's parameters even without a new 2nd Stage?
Add that 2nd enhanced stage and, well, the Moon's the limit.
Or, yeah, put the money and time into Starship, but seriously, all that Falcon hardware and experience and stuff is right there, how hard would it be to build said enhanced stage?
Since DragonXL was/is/maybe part of everything, and that's just an extended non-atmospheric-shaped, 2nd stage looking, 3rd stage with attached cargo and solar panels, building an enhanced 2nd stage to uprate the Falcon Heavy shouldn't be that hard.
I understand that SpaceX is going fully in on Starship but the Falcon system is still the only thing functioning for the next few years. And there's nothing in the future that stops Falcon from being a viable system even with Starship functioning, for at least a few years during a usable Starship infancy.
Come on, Musk. You know you want to. You want to make Falcon Heavy bigger, better, faster...
Beans, it's really easy to say, "...how hard would it be to...", but the devil is in the details. You don't *just* make it bigger or longer, there's stresses and loads that can radically change how things react and/or how much energy/stress is involved. Ask me how I know...
DeleteMy favorite adage goes, "Easy to do is easy to say!" and I have always found that to be true. It especially applies to my wife saying, "Honey, I just have a little thing for you to do - it shouldn't take long or cost much."
HAH! She lies like a rug, she does...
Yeah, I know. But right now SpaceX has more launch data on Falcon 9 than any other launcher this side of Russia. And SpaceX has shown its ability to design and build quicker and better than anyone else.
DeleteIt's an interesting thought experiment. What can SpaceX do to enhance Falcon 9 in performance and ability? Some of the things they could do is several modifications to the booster and 2nd stage as noted above.
Surprisingly, one of the biggest things that could enhance the whole system is upgrading the Merlin engine. Musk admits that the engine is not anywhere near optimum performance, but it's 'good enough.' Upgrading Merlin like SpaceX did with Raptor, getting rid of all extraneous stuff and simplifying it should result in improved, maybe vastly improved, engine performance. Which means more lift capacity, longer better burns and such.
Learned something regarding those gravity assists, where the closer you get to a planets center if gravity the larger the boost in velocity, its darn near squared function too, and it seems NASA is way way way too conservative, they have a ton if distance they could decrease for these fly by assists. I mean why not take advantage of all the free deltaV begging to be used? Get right down to the weeds, after all, an inch is as good as a mile, particularly say using a lunar gravity boost, no atmosphere, only mountains in the way. Close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades, now gravity flyby boost's.
ReplyDeleteGravity assists don't increase the overall speed, they just change the direction. Speed gained on the way in is the same as speed lost on the way out. This is widely misunderstood because people confuse velocity and speed.
DeleteRemember, "velocity" is a vector, and "speed" is a scalar. You change the velocity by swinging around a mass, but the overall kinetic energy doesn't change. You are only changing the pointing direction of the vector (which would take more energy from a rocket if there wasn't a planet nearby).
Gravity assist works as follows (and velocity (speed) DOES change!):
DeleteOn the way in, your spacecraft has a certain mass. You burn propellant when you "exit" the gravity well (which almost always corresponds to the Closest Point of Approach), and in so doing you "lighten" the spacecraft which results in a greater effect of propulsion on the mass of the spacecraft. Heaver going in, lighter going out. better acceleration than just "straight line" thrusting. Gravity matters, in this case.
See: Rocket Equation (for hte details).
Summation: A Gravity Assisted Accelleration gives you more bang for the buck. Or push for the propellant utilized.
(This is hard to explain without a bunch of vectors, graphs, and math math math. I had a JPL Astrogatipn guy teach me how this works. Thanks, Paul!)
SCIENCE!
(Acutally, Rocket Science!)
Thanks, Igor. I was considering the case of a satellite with no propulsive ability.
DeleteAh, Mal, I see you now - it's like holding on to something to make a very sharp turn without wiping out because traction won't let you.
DeleteYep, what you are describing is a "gravity turn", whereas what I was describing is called a "gravity assist". Propulsion is the key difference...
Ok, I'll confess to being sloppy in my terminology...but both change the *velocity* ;-) Honestly, I don't know how much fuel the probe under discussion has. It would make a lot of difference for a fully-fueled Starship, less so for a probe with a limited ability to spit tobacco juice out the rear.
DeleteGood analogy with the icy turn, there.