Europa Clipper Mission: Onward to Implementation!
Europa, the fourth largest moon of Jupiter, is believed to be one of the best places in the solar system to look for extant life beyond Earth, and the Europa Clipper Mission is preparing to investigate. Now entering the fifth year of life as a formal project, the Europa Clipper Mission has completed its major design phase and is preparing for implementation. The mission envisions sending a flight system, consisting of a spacecraft equipped with a payload of NASA-selected scientific instruments, to execute numerous flybys of Europa while in Jupiter orbit. The mission is being formulated and implemented by a joint Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Project team. At the Project Preliminary Design Review (PDR) in August 2018, it was determined that the unique integration of the REASON instrument’s antennas with the spacecraft’s solar arrays required additional time for maturity and review. The required maturity was demonstrated, and in June 2019 the Clipper Mission passed its Delta Preliminary Design Review, and formal confirmation for entry into Phase C was announced by NASA in August 2019. The earliest launch opportunity is now in July 2023, one year later than originally planned. The Project is now working toward its Critical Design Review in May 2020. This paper will describe the progress of the Europa Clipper Mission since January 2019, including maturation of the spacecraft, subsystem and instrument designs, the beginning of fabrication of engineering models and the first flight models, planning for the verification & validation phase, and planning for operations.