Europa Clipper Mission and Trajectory Design

Stefano Campagnola（ステファノ　カンパニョーラ）
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Europa is one of the most scientifically interesting targets of the solar system, as it may possess what are thought to be the three necessary ingredients for life: an extensive ocean of liquid water, an energy source, and a suite of biogenic elements. To explore the habitability of Europa, NASA is developing the Europa Clipper mission, currently scheduled to be launched in 2023. Europa resides deep inside the gravity well of Jupiter, in a region of the magnetosphere with many trapped ionized particles that when accelerated to near relativistic speeds result in a radiation environment detrimental to spacecraft electronics; a Europa orbiter mission that would continuously reside in the same radiation environment as Europa would require a large amount of ΔV for an orbit insertion maneuver, and would only return limited science data before being critically exposed to radiation. To mitigate these issues, Europa Clipper will instead use a high number of Europa flybys, connected by resonant and non-resonant transfers. Science data are collected during high-radiation Europa flybys, and returned to Earth during the rest of the highly elliptical Jovian orbits, at a much lower radiation dose exposure. This talk will present an overview of the Europa Clipper Mission, and discuss some of the tour techniques developed to meet the hundreds of science requirements levied on trajectory design.

Place: Bldg. A 2F Conf. hall (1236) / A棟２階会議場（1236号室）
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