NASA and SpaceX are moving forward with plans to conduct a Launch Readiness Review at 1 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 13, ahead of a targeted launch for the agency’s Europa Clipper mission no earlier than Monday, Oct. 14. Teams stood down from a potential launch opportunity on Oct. 13, to double-check technical readiness of the Falcon Heavy rocket, as well as continued assessments for launch readiness following Hurricane Milton.
NASA issued an updated media advisory late Saturday with coverage details for prelaunch and launch activities.
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida remains closed as Hurricane Milton moves off the coast.
The safety of everyone impacted by the storm remains our top priority as the agency begins the assessment and recovery process from the hurricane.
Once the winds subsided to a safe level, the center’s Ride Out Team and engineering teams began initial checkouts to ensure bridges are safe and useable. Later, a larger assessment team will thoroughly check the entire center.
The agency’s Europa Clipper launch team will schedule an official launch date when teams from NASA and SpaceX are able to perform their assessments, and confirm it’s safe to launch. Teams are working to protect launch opportunities no earlier than Sunday, Oct. 13. Clipper has launch opportunities through Wednesday, Nov. 6.
NASA will provide more information on Clipper launch opportunities as it becomes available.
Launch preparations are progressing with NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. The spacecraft arrived at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in May, where the team recently attached the high-gain antenna.
Engineers with NASA’s Europa Clipper mission continue to conduct extensive testing of transistors that help control the flow of electricity on the spacecraft. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission, began the tests after learning that some of these parts may not withstand the radiation of the Jupiter system, which is the most intense radiation environment in the solar system.
Tests also are being conducted at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA Goddard.
The issue with the transistors came to light in May when the mission team was advised that similar parts were failing at lower radiation doses than expected. In June 2024, an industry alert was sent out to notify users of this issue. The manufacturer is working with the mission team to support ongoing radiation test and analysis efforts in order to better understand the risk of using these parts on the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
Testing data obtained so far indicates some transistors are likely to fail in the high-radiation environment near Jupiter and its moon Europa because the parts are not as radiation resistant as expected. The team is working to determine how many transistors may be susceptible and how they will perform in-flight. NASA is evaluating options for maximizing the transistors’ longevity in the Jupiter system. A preliminary analysis is expected to be complete in late July.
Radiation-hardened electronics are used throughout industry to protect spacecraft from radiation damage that can occur in space. The Jupiter system is particularly harmful to spacecraft as its enormous magnetic field — 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field — traps charged particles and accelerates them to very high energies, creating intense radiation that bombards Europa and other inner moons. It appears that the issue that may be impacting the transistors on Europa Clipper is a phenomenon that the industry wasn’t aware of and represents a newly identified gap in the industry standard radiation qualification of transistor wafer lots.
Europa Clipper’s launch period opens Oct. 10, and it is set to arrive at Jupiter in 2030, where it will conduct science investigations to understand the potential habitability of Europa as it flies by the moon multiple times.
As NASA’s Europa Clipper continues preparations in advance of its launch period — opening Oct. 10 — the mission team is assessing whether transistors on the spacecraft can withstand the intense radiation the probe will encounter at Jupiter.
These transistors are used as electrical switches in many digital electronics. The particular versions used by Europa Clipper are radiation-hardened and are intended to tolerate 100 to 300 kilorad, or krad (a “rad” is a unit of measure for absorbed dose of ionizing radiation). However, the mission team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission, is assessing test data that indicates some transistors could be affected by significantly lower radiation levels in some conditions.
The team is conducting more extensive testing to better characterize the transistor behavior and whether it may affect the functionality of the circuits on Europa Clipper. The agency has time to continue this work as the spacecraft proceeds toward its October launch period.
Technicians examine the first of two fully extended five-panel solar arrays built for NASA’s Europa Clipper suspended on a support system called a gravity offload fixture during inspection and cleaning as part of assembly, test, and launch operations inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, March 6, 2024. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
Processing of the large solar arrays built for NASA’s Europa Clipper is now underway inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Planned to arrive at Jupiter in April 2030, the spacecraft will study Jupiter’s moon Europa, which shows strong evidence beneath its icy crust of a global ocean over twice the volume of all Earth’s oceans. Europa is currently considered one of the most promising habitable environments in our solar system.
The first of two five-panel solar arrays built for NASA’s Europa Clipper stands inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for inspection and cleaning as part of assembly, test, and launch operations on Wednesday, March 6, 2024. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
Once processing of the first five-panel solar array is complete, technicians will remove it from the gravity offload fixture, which helps support the weight of the array. The same steps will then be repeated with the second solar array. Built by Airbus in Leiden, Netherlands, the arrays arrived at Kennedy late last month by truck, after travelling to the U.S. by air.
When both solar arrays are installed and deployed on Europa Clipper – the agency’s largest spacecraft ever developed for a planetary mission – the spacecraft will span a total length of more than 100 feet and weigh 7,145 pounds without the inclusion of propellants. The spacecraft needs the large solar arrays to collect enough light to power it as it operates in the Jupiter system, which is more than five times as far from the Sun as Earth.
Europa Clipper is being assembled at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and is managed in partnership with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. The spacecraft will ship to Florida later this year for launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, is managing the launch service.
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