Image Credit: Credit: ESA/NASA/ATG medialab/University of Leicester/DLR/JPL-Caltech/University of ArizonaEngineers at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California met a significant milestone recently by delivering key elements of an ice-penetrating radar instrument for an
wEuropean Space Agency (ESA) mission to explore Jupiter and its three large icy moons.
While following the laboratory's stringent Covid-19 Safe-at-Work precautions, JPL teams managed to build and ship the receiver, transmitter, and electronics necessary to complete the radar instrument for the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission.
Set to launch in 2022, JUICE will orbit Jupiter for three years, perform multiple fly-bys of moons Callisto and Europa, then orbit Ganymede. The spacecraft will observe Jupiter's atmosphere up close as well as analyse the surfaces and interiors of the three moons, which are believed to harbour liquid water under their icy crusts.
One of 10 instruments, the radar is key to exploring those moons. Called Radar for Icy Moon Exploration, or RIME, it sends out radio waves that can penetrate the surface up to 6 or 7 miles and collects data on how the waves bounce back. Some of the waves penetrate the crust and reflect off subsurface features - and the watery interiors — enabling scientists to ‘see’ underneath.
In the case of Europa, which is believed to have a global ocean beneath its crust, the radar data will help gauge the thickness of the ice. NASA's Europa Clipper mission, set to launch in the mid-2020s, will arrive around the same time as JUICE and collect complementary science as it performs multiple fly-bys of Europa.
A collaboration between JPL in Southern California and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), JUICE's RIME is led by Principal Investigator Lorenzo Bruzzone of the University of Trento in Italy.
JPL's responsibility was to make and deliver the transmitter and receiver - the pieces that send out and pull in radio signals - as well as the electronics that help those pieces communicate with RIME's antenna.
Now that the components have been delivered to ASI in Rome, the next steps are to test and integrate them before assembling the instrument.
JPL's Jeffrey Plaut, co-principal investigator of RIME, said: “I'm really impressed that the engineers working on this project were able to pull this off. We are so proud of them, because it was incredibly challenging. We had a commitment to our partners overseas, and we met that - which is very gratifying.”