The spacecraft headed to Jupiter's moon Europa and used Mars flights to calibrate its infrared imaging tools for some sightseeing.

NASA's Europa Clippers recently waving Mars, taking the opportunity to capture infrared images of the Red Planet. The data will help mission scientists calibrate the spacecraft's thermal imaging instruments so they can determine that it operates correctly when it reaches the Jupiter system in 2030.

The mission's attractions are set in Jupiter's moon Europa and the global ocean hidden beneath its icy surface. A year after slid into orbit around Jupiter, the Europa Clippers will start a series of 49 close-range moons to investigate whether it is suitable for life.

A key element of the study is thermal imaging-Europa's global scan to map temperatures to elucidate the degree of surface activity. Infrared imaging will reveal how much heat the moon emits; warm areas of ice emit more energy and indicate recent activity.

Imaging will also tell scientists where the ocean is closest to the ground. Europa is crisscrossed by dramatic ridges and cracks, which scientists believe are caused by ocean convection, bringing the cold shell and water up to fill the gap.

“We want to measure the temperature of these functions,” said Phil Christensen, principal investigator of the Europa Clippers infrared camera at Arizona State University. "If Europa was a very active place, those breaks would be hotter than the ice near the ocean's ground. Or if water exploded onto the surface millions of years ago, those surfaces were still relatively warm."

Why Mars

On March 1, the Europa Clippers plane flew only 550 miles (884 kilometers) above the surface of Mars in order to reshape the spacecraft’s trajectory using the Earth’s gravitational pull. Ultimately, the assist will make Jupiter's mission faster than keeping it consistent for the gas giant, but Flyby also provides Europa Clipper with a crucial opportunity to test E-Themis.

In about 18 minutes on March 1, the instrument captured an image every second, transmitting more than a thousand grayscale images to the Earth starting from May 5. After summarizing these images into a global snapshot of Mars, scientists used a familiar association: Warm areas: Warm areas are depicted in red, while cold areas are displayed in blue.

By comparing the electronic subjective image with images made from established Martian data, scientists can judge the working status of the instrument.

"We have no point in these new images," Christensen said. "The goal is to capture an image of a planetary body that we know very well and to ensure that the data sets look exactly based on the instruments that record Mars for 20 years."

NASA's Mars Odyssey Orbiter was launched in 2001 and carries a sister instrument called Themis, which has been capturing thermal images of its own red planet for decades. To be thorough, the Odyssey team collected thermal images of Mars during the Europa Clippers' flight so that Europa scientists could compare the visual effects as additional visual effects to introduce calibration of the electronic themis.

The Europa Clippers also used their close proximity to Mars to test all components of their radar instruments consistently for the first time. The radar antenna and its wavelengths are so long that it is impossible for an engineer to do this in a clean room before launching. Radar data will be returned and analyzed in the coming weeks and months, but a preliminary evaluation of real-time telemetry shows that the test is well done.

To further utilize Flyby, the scientific team took this opportunity to ensure that the spacecraft's telecommunications equipment can perform gravity experiments in Europa. By passing the signal to Earth, they can confirm that similar operations are expected to work in Europa through the gravity field on Mars.

Europa Clippers launched on October 14, 2024 from NASA's Kennedy Passion Center and embarked on a 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) journey to Jupiter through SpaceX Falcon Heaven, five times the distance from the sun. Now, the probe has taken advantage of the gravity of Mars, and its next gravity will come from Earth in 2026.

More information about the Europa Clippers

The three main scientific goals of the Europa Clippers were to determine the thickness of the moon's cold shell and its interaction with the oceans below to study its composition and characterize its geology. The mission's detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential of the habitable world outside our planet.

NASA is chaired by Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, in Pasadena, California, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and served as NASA Science Mission Directory in Laurel, Maryland at NASA Science Mission in Washington. APL has designed the main spacecraft agency in collaboration with JPL in Greenbelt and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama’s NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. NASA Marshall's Planet Mission Planning Office performs planning management of the Europa Clipper mission. NASA Kennedy-based NASA Launch Services program manages launch services for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Find more information about the Europa Clippers here:

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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
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