back to article Europa Clipper heads to Jupiter: Can its icy moon support life?

The Europa Clipper has unfurled its solar panels and is on its way to Jupiter, but it's taking a circuitous route by way of Mars. The launch itself went off without a hitch, much to the relief of the assembled scientists, engineers, and mission specialists. Millions of hours of work could have been blotted out in an instant if …

  1. Screepy

    Fascinating

    I wonder why they have to destroy the craft at the end of the mission. I understand they don't want to contaminate Europa but we're ok with contaminating Ganymede?

    Does anyone know why they can't just slingshot away from Jupiter and it's moons and send it off into the dark with it's sensors running sending NASA data until it runs out of power (a la Voyager)?

    1. EricM Silver badge

      Re: Fascinating

      > Does anyone know why they can't just slingshot away from Jupiter and it's moons and send it off into the dark with it's sensors running sending NASA data until it runs out of power (a la Voyager)?

      The Pioneers and Voyagers were fly-bys. They did not slow down to examine the system in depth, they kept their speed and went off to interplanetary space. No fuel needed for that.

      In contrast, Europa Clipper will burn most of its remaining fuel at Jupter arrival to slow down enough to enter into an orbit around Jupter.

      After that burn it sits deep inside the gravity well of Jupiter and its remaining fuel only allows slight trajectory corrections.

      So there is not enough fuel left to accelearate enough to leave the Jovian system again.

    2. normal1

      Re: Fascinating

      “ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA.

      ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

      USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.”

      ― Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two

    3. Version 1.0 Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Fascinating

      It will be amazing to discover traces of life on the Jupiter moon, there have been discussions about this being possible for years now, probably just cellular life but shrimp related or even fish would be amazing. Think about everything we see around our Antarctic ... it's unlikely on Jupiter's moon but slightly possible?

      I started studying science as a kid for years before computers appeared at home, once computers appeared they were interesting and fun to keep fixing them - the science environment is so much more wonderful, full of discussions of possibilities and evidence ... virtually no bug fixing and update failures.

      I so enjoy seeing and reading all of the El Reg SCIENCE descriptions - such a great collection every time.

      1. collinsl Silver badge

        Re: Fascinating

        > virtually no bug fixing and update failures.

        Except you could argue that in evolutionary terms every dead end or useless appendix is a bug fix because it's been moved away from or evolved past or no longer deemed necessary?

        Also in all science the number of failures of experiments and hypotheses vastly outweighs the successes - that's how we learn scientifically, by constantly being wrong until we're right. That could be argued to be update failure equivalent.

    4. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Sorry about that Ganymedians; a bit of a cock up on the crashing probe front...

      "but we're ok with contaminating Ganymede?"

      I had much the same thought. "I hope there's not life their."

      Ganymede has a subsurface ocean, albeit deeper (I think) than Europa. But we're completely clueless. It's not impossible that Europa is barren and Ganymede is teaming with life.

      1. Atomic Duetto

        Deep cut

        Apparently [Robert A. Heinlein] we were going to terraform Ganymede for farming, so slamming 6tonne objects into it was an early mission objective baked in as the first step in pulverising what was (then) assumed to be rock to make soil. Good to see Space Patrol coming along too.

        1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
          Alien

          Re: Deep cut

          I believe you are referring to the novel 'Farmer in the Sky', which I read when I was a schoolboy, many years ago.

    5. I am David Jones Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Fascinating

      I reckon it’s because Europa’s surface is continually renewing itself, implying that contamination on the surface will likely make it down to the ocean below.

      Ganymede has geological features that are billions of years old (thanks Wikipedia) so contamination will stay on the surface, where life is as good as impossible.

      1. Potemkine! Silver badge

        Re: Fascinating

        I doubt we have enough knowledge about Ganymede to be affirmative about this. Sending Europa Clipper to burn into Jupiter atmosphere seems more reasonable.

        We'll know more about Ganymede after the study to come by ESA's JUICE

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fascinating

      Apart from the fuel thing mentioned earlier, Voyager is nuclear powered so can sail off into the distance until the power runs out. Clipper is solar, so needs to be relatively close to the sun to operate.

      Personally, I'd rather see them crash it into Jupiter when it's done, but I assume that's not possible with the fuel and maneuverability they have.

  2. harrys Bronze badge

    been watching the new brian cox solar system series

    wow, so much new stuff has been learnt in last two/three decades or so which i was totally ignorant off :(

    what a crazy wierd but understandable place our backyard is

    lucky to be around at this time in history me thinks

    may u live in interesting times (genuinely, no sarcasm intended) :)

  3. Martin J Hooper

    In before anyone else does.... :)

    “ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA.

    ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

    USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.”

    ― Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two

  4. SnailFerrous
    Joke

    Gravity slingshots. They're going to doom us all!

    Where does the energy for the speed boosts from the Earth and Mars encounters come from? By slowing down the planet's themselves. Darn' freeloading space probes. Do it enough times and we'll all spiral in to the Sun. Stop this madness now!

    1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Gravity slingshots. They're going to doom us all!

      I did once try and calculate how much the speed of Jupiter's orbit reduced courtesy of a gravity assist for a voyager-sized probe. I ran out of zeros after the decimal point...

      But have one of these for your obvious concern! -->

      1. DJO Silver badge

        Re: Gravity slingshots. They're going to doom us all!

        According to Wikipedia:

        ...a one-ton spacecraft passing Jupiter will theoretically cause the planet to lose approximately 5 x 10 -25 km/s of orbital velocity for every km/s of velocity relative to the Sun gained by the spacecraft.

        That is a lot of zeros after the decimal place.

        You can also use Gravity Assist to slow a craft down which increases the orbital velocity of the planet so it will all balance out in the long term.

        (2003 article cited by Wikipedia: https://web.archive.org/web/20200801071531/http://maths.dur.ac.uk/~dma0rcj/Psling/sling.pdf)

        1. collinsl Silver badge

          Re: Gravity slingshots. They're going to doom us all!

          > You can also use Gravity Assist to slow a craft down which increases the orbital velocity of the planet so it will all balance out in the long term.

          Yes but where are you transferring that energy from? It's all a zero-sum game at the end of the day. Everything will eventually stop moving and reach absolute zero.

    2. Eclectic Man Silver badge

      Re: Gravity slingshots. They're going to doom us all!

      But, the Sun is losing mass at the rate of many tonnes per day, so if the Earth and other orbiting bodies are not to float off into space, we need to slow our orbits to take account of this.

      "The Sun gets its energy by crushing together hydrogen and other atoms until they fuse together. By Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2, this energy output leads to a loss in the Sun’s mass of over 350 billion tonnes each day."

      From https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/if-the-sun-is-constantly-losing-mass-via-nuclear-fusion-how-come-its-not-getting-any-smaller

      1. David Hicklin Silver badge

        Re: Gravity slingshots. They're going to doom us all!

        > But, the Sun is losing mass at the rate of many tonnes per day, so if the Earth and other orbiting bodies are not to float off into space, we need to slow our orbits to take account of this.

        But the sun will also get much hotter swelling into a Red Giant near the end of its life and it is touch and go if the Earth (although totally molten by then) will escape being consumed by the Sun or not, so we need to start slowly moving the Earth away from the sun (will also help climate change so a win-win)

        1. Eclectic Man Silver badge

          Re: Gravity slingshots. They're going to doom us all!

          Sh*t! This space / rocket sciencey stuff is really tricky. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

          1. collinsl Silver badge

            Re: Gravity slingshots. They're going to doom us all!

            Well if we put the planet on a really slow elliptical orbit we can get closer to the sun for now and use it's mass to slingshot us further away when the sun does expand!

  5. Gene Cash Silver badge

    In other UK space news - Skyrora delayed over a year because UK gov't can't get its sh*t together

    https://spacenews.com/skyora-eyes-spring-2025-launch-amid-uk-regulatory-hangups/

    Scotland-based Skyrora hopes to launch its first suborbital mission from British soil in the spring following a year of regulatory delays.

    [...]

    The company applied for a license from the U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority in August 2022 to conduct spaceflight activities from Saxavord Spaceport, located in Scotland’s Shetland Islands, initially expecting it to take nine to 18 months to process.

    But the CAA advised Skyrora in September 2023 to submit an additional license application for Skylark L, according to Alan Thompson, Skyrora’s head of government affairs.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Skyrora delayed over a year because UK gov't can't get its sh*t together

      They just don’t seem to have The Knack.

      My Skyrora….

    2. Irongut Silver badge

      Re: In other UK space news...

      Sounds to me like the company didn't submit the correct applications in the first place.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    will it have photon torpedos?

    Its nice we have this sober space mission to counter the ridiculous humans standing on the surface with ray guns mentality adolf musk peddles.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    >"broadband speeds being someone on a horse in the seventeenth century"

    Never underestimate the bandwidth of a courier with a saddlebag full of parchment galloping down the trail!

    1. collinsl Silver badge

      If they're carrying about 512 pages of documents at roughly A4 size then they'll be carrying about 1MB, according to the theory that 1 page is about 2K of storage.

      That's not including space for the envelopes (if used, most older letters were just folded over and waxed together), the wax seals, or the courier's lunch

  8. Miss Config

    So which probe will 'succeed' ?

    Seems the exobiology community has the equivalent of a 'Mac vs. PC' argument in terms of which Jovian moon, Europa or Ganymede, is more likely to have life ?

    What I find 'funny' is that it is the "EUROP e ANS" who are going to Ganymede.

    I presume NASA chose 'its' moon first and the NASA in-house 'consensus' must be that Europa has a better chance of having life.

    But at least JUICE and Europa Clipper will between them send the right answers.

  9. Hurn

    Begging the question...

    OK, you got me.

    The probe is getting gravity assists from first Mars, and then, Earth.

    You state (paraphrasing) that the delta v gained from Mars is 2 clicks* per second.

    How much delta v is gained from the Earth fly by, and, why are you making me ask this question?

    Also, it's been 4 days, does no one else want to know? (Or is everyone (else) just waiting for some idiot, like me, to ask?)

    * clicks = kilometres, sometimes known as kilometers

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