The Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), one of the nine science instruments which will fly aboard NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, recently arrived at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA-JPL) in Southern California.
Designed and built by the Arizona State University, E-THEMIS is an infrared camera designed to analyze infrared light from Europa to map the temperatures across the moon's surface. Images captured by the thermal imaging system will help scientists find clues about the Jovian moon's geological activity, including regions where the moon's presumed ocean may lie near the surface, and determine the physical state of the icy surface.
Special delivery: After months of testing, the E-THEMIS instrument has arrived @NASAJPL, where it will be integrated into our spacecraft. More: https://t.co/iDYBAqWbkk https://t.co/x9PrSOCh7Y pic.twitter.com/uhnz25TB0B
The Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in October 2024 and arrive at Jupiter in April 2030 after making flybys of Mars in 2025 and Earth in 2026.
Scientists are confident that Europa harbours an internal ocean with twice the amount of water in Earth's oceans combined, so it may currently have conditions suitable for supporting life. The science instruments onboard the spacecraft will investigate everything from the depth and salinity of the ocean to the thickness of the ice crust to the characteristics of potential plumes that may be venting subsurface water into space.
NASA's Europa Clipper will investigate whether Jupiter's ice-shrouded moon Europa has the capability to support some form of life. The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter and conduct multiple close flybys of its icy moon to gather data on its atmosphere, surface, and interior.
Europa Clipper will be only the third spacecraft to orbit Jupiter - the largest planet in our solar system - and also be the first NASA mission to exclusively study a moon other than Earth's Moon.
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