Friday, January 26, 2024

Olympic Figure Skaters Explore Jupiter's Icy Moon Europa with NASA | JPL

Olympic Figure Skaters Explore Jupiter's Icy Moon Europa with NASA | JPL

Explore icy moons, like Jupiter’s moon Europa, with Olympic figure skaters Kaitlin Hawayek and Jean-Luc Baker!

Dr. Trina Ray, an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a member of the Europa Clipper mission team, answers their questions about why Europa’s surface is one big ice sheet, and what it might be like to skate there.

After its scheduled October 2024 launch, Europa Clipper will embark on a six-year, 1.8-billion-mile (2.9-billion-kilometer) journey to this ocean world, that it will begin investigating in earnest starting in 2031.

The Europa Clipper spacecraft will train nine science instruments on Europa, all producing large amounts of rich data: high-resolution color and stereo images to study its geology and surface; thermal images in infrared light to find warmer areas where water could be near the surface; reflected infrared light to map ices, salts, and organics; and ultraviolet light readings to help determine the makeup of atmospheric gases and surface materials. Clipper will bounce ice-penetrating radar off the subsurface ocean to determine its depth, as well as the thickness of the ice crust above it. A magnetometer will measure the moon’s magnetic field to confirm the deep ocean’s existence and the thickness of the ice.

For more information about the mission, visit: 

https://europa.nasa.gov/

Download Europa Clipper Ocean World poster: go.nasa.gov/3Gsjzt5

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, designed Europa Clipper’s body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.


Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Duration: 2 minutes, 23 seconds

Release Date: Jan. 26, 2024


#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Jupiter #Europa #Moon #OceanMoon #Astrobiology #Biosignatures #Habitability #Radiation #EuropaClipper #EuropaClipperSpacecraft #SolarSystem #SpaceExploration #JHUAPL #GSFC #MSFC #JPL #Caltech #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

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