Tiny Satellites Could Hitchhike To Europa With Bigger NASA Mission Concept

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Tiny Satellites Could Hitchhike To Europa With Bigger NASA Mission Concept

Tiny Satellites Could Hitchhike To Europa With Bigger NASA Mission Concept:

Artist’s conception of CubeSats near Europa (left) and Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL

When you’ve got a $2 billion mission concept to head to Europa, it’s likely a good idea to pack as much science on this mission as possible. That’s the thinking that NASA had as it invited 10 universities to send their ideas for CubeSats — tiny satellites — that would accompany the Europa Clipper mission to the Jupiter system.

Europa Clipper is only on the drawing board right now and not fully funded, and should not be confused with the lower-cost $1 billion Europa mission that NASA proposed earlier this year (also not fully funded). But however NASA gets there, the agency is hoping to learn if the moon could be a good spot for life.

Each university is being awarded up to $25,000 to develop their ideas further, and they will have until next summer to work on them. Investigations include searching the surface for future landing sites, or examining Europan properties such as gravity, its atmosphere, magnetic fields or radiation.

Two reddish spots (Thera and Thrace) stick out on this image of Europa taken by the Galileo orbit in the 1990s. NASA says they display “enigmatic terrain.” Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

“Using CubeSats for planetary exploration is just now becoming possible, so we want to explore how a future mission to Europa might take advantage of them,” said Barry Goldstein, pre-project manager for the Europa Clipper mission concept, in a press release.

If Europa Clipper flies, it would do at least 45 flybys at altitudes between 16 miles and 1,700 miles (25 kilometers and 2,700 kilometers.) Part of its expense comes from the long distance, and also from all the radiation shielding the spacecraft would need as it orbits immense Jupiter.

Science instruments are still being figured out, but some ideas include radar (to look under Europa’s crust), an infrared spectrometer (to see what is on the ice), a camera to image the surface and a spectrometer to look at the moon’s thin atmosphere.

While there are no Europa missions officially booked now, NASA does have an active spacecraft called Juno that will arrive at Jupiter in July 2016.

About Elizabeth Howell

Elizabeth Howell is the senior writer at Universe Today. She also works for Space.com, Space Exploration Network, the NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Astrobiology Magazine and LiveScience, among others. Career highlights include watching three shuttle launches, and going on a two-week simulated Mars expedition in rural Utah. You can follow her on Twitter @howellspace or contact her at her website.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

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The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

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UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

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Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Tuesday, October 14, 2014