Dr. Becky | Delays to the Europa Clipper launch to Jupiter's icy (potentially habitable) moon? NSN July 24 BONUS @DrBecky | Uploaded 2 months ago | Updated 3 days ago
There’s been a lot of doubt cast this month about NASA’s Europa Clipper mission which is planned for a launch in October on one of SpaceX’s falcon heavy rockets. Europa clipper is set to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa with a number of fly-bys. And what’s so special about Europa? Well the Galileo mission in the early 2000s found evidence that there could be a liquid ocean under Europa’s icy crust layer. So the idea is Europa Clipper will investigate its habitability and study the surface to try and find a suitable place for the Europa lander to touch down which is set to launch a few years later in 2027. Now as we get closer to the launch date, things are starting to get a bit nail biter because this month NASA announced that the team’s engineers have been investigating a problem with the transistors on board the spacecraft - these are essentially switches that can control the flow of electricity on the craft - and they found that they were failing at lower radiation doses than they were rated for. That’s a big deal because the region around Jupiter’s is the most radiation intense in the solar system because of Jupiter’s strong magnetic field that’s 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s, which traps all the high energy particles from the Sun. Europa clipper will have to exist in that environment and it can’t if the transistors fail. So the team at NASA are working with the manufacturers to work out if all of the transistors are affected and to what degree. There’s a report due at the end of July so let’s hope it’s good news because that October launch window for Europa clipper is only 21 days. SO we can only afford a 3 week delay 🤞
#spaceexploration #nasa #space #jupiter #shorts
👩🏽💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
http://drbecky.uk.com
There’s been a lot of doubt cast this month about NASA’s Europa Clipper mission which is planned for a launch in October on one of SpaceX’s falcon heavy rockets. Europa clipper is set to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa with a number of fly-bys. And what’s so special about Europa? Well the Galileo mission in the early 2000s found evidence that there could be a liquid ocean under Europa’s icy crust layer. So the idea is Europa Clipper will investigate its habitability and study the surface to try and find a suitable place for the Europa lander to touch down which is set to launch a few years later in 2027. Now as we get closer to the launch date, things are starting to get a bit nail biter because this month NASA announced that the team’s engineers have been investigating a problem with the transistors on board the spacecraft - these are essentially switches that can control the flow of electricity on the craft - and they found that they were failing at lower radiation doses than they were rated for. That’s a big deal because the region around Jupiter’s is the most radiation intense in the solar system because of Jupiter’s strong magnetic field that’s 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s, which traps all the high energy particles from the Sun. Europa clipper will have to exist in that environment and it can’t if the transistors fail. So the team at NASA are working with the manufacturers to work out if all of the transistors are affected and to what degree. There’s a report due at the end of July so let’s hope it’s good news because that October launch window for Europa clipper is only 21 days. SO we can only afford a 3 week delay 🤞
#spaceexploration #nasa #space #jupiter #shorts
👩🏽💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
http://drbecky.uk.com
