Europa Clipper Charts Course to Jupiter With First Stellar Snapshots

Europa Clipper Charts Course to Jupiter With First Stellar Snapshots
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Feb 05, 2025

Three months after lifting off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Europa Clipper spacecraft still has 1.6 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) ahead before it settles into Jupiter's orbit in 2030. On arrival, it will capture detailed views of Europa's icy terrain. In the meantime, a pair of specialized cameras called star trackers is busy photographing deep space to confirm the craft's precise orientation, ensuring mission teams can continuously aim communication antennas at Earth and relay data without interruption.

In early December, the dual star trackers (formally referred to as stellar reference units) beamed back their initial images. Those combined pictures revealed glimmers of stars between 150 and 300 light-years away, a tiny fraction of the sky yet enough for Europa Clipper to ascertain its orientation. Among those bright pinpoints are Gienah, Algorab, Kraz, and Alchiba, the four most luminous stars in the constellation Corvus, meaning "crow" in Latin and linked to Apollo in Greek mythology.

These pictures also confirm the star trackers' successful hardware check. The spacecraft has been undergoing systematic checkouts since launching on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Oct. 14, 2024. "The star trackers are engineering hardware and are always taking images, which are processed on board," said Joanie Noonan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who oversees guidance, navigation, and control operations. "We usually don't downlink photos from the trackers, but we did in this case because it's a really good way to make sure the hardware - including the cameras and their lenses - made it safely through launch."

While these cameras inform the craft's orientation, a separate process handles navigation. Nonetheless, precise pointing is vital for sending and receiving signals and for scientific instruments, like the Europa Imaging System (EIS). EIS will spend the mission documenting Europa's distinctive ridges, fractures, and valleys. For at least three years, its covers will remain closed to safeguard it during flight.

Europa Clipper carries nine science instruments plus telecommunications components for a gravity science study. Over 49 scheduled flybys of Europa, the spacecraft will collect measurements that may help researchers determine whether the moon's icy shell and concealed ocean hold the conditions necessary for life to form.

Currently, the orbiter is about 53 million miles (85 million kilometers) from Earth, traveling at 17 miles per second (27 kilometers per second) relative to the Sun. Next, on March 1, it will swing by Mars and tap into the Red Planet's gravity to pick up speed on its epic trek to Jupiter.