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NASA Scientists "Howl in Terror" as They Discovered Disastrous Flaw in
$5 Billion Spacecraft About to Launch
"You bury your face in a pillow and you howl in terror."
/ Off World/ Europa/ Europa Clipper/ Jupiter
Getty / Futurism
Image by Getty / Futurism
If NASA's $5 billion Europa Clipper mission launches next month, it will
be embarking on a historic scientific objective. The enormous space
probe, with solar arrays over one hundred feet long, is designed to
travel all the way to Jupiter, where it will examine one of the gas
giant's largest moons, Europa.
Underneath its icy exterior, the Galilean moon is believed to harbor a
deep ocean which contains twice as much seawater as Earth. Once it
arrives in 2030, the Europa Clipper will perform dozens of flybys to
assess if the water-world is capable of supporting life.
But, as The New York Times documents, in May — just months before the
launch date — the mission scientists at NASA discovered a disastrous
flaw in the craft.
As lead scientist Curt Niebur was informed by an urgent email, recent
tests revealed that essential transistors in the Europa Clipper would be
destroyed by Jupiter's intense radiation. Simply put, it would be game over.
"You open that email right away," Niebur told the NYT. "You read it, and
then you reply, 'Thank you for sharing,' and then you bury your face in
a pillow and you howl in terror."
One of the biggest hurdles to exploring Jupiter is that it's shielded by
a monstrous magnetosphere. The magnetic field it contains captures
charged particles and accelerates them to ridiculous velocities, forming
bands of intense radiation that wreak havoc on electronics.
The transistors, which are known as MOSFETS — that stands for
"metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect" — were supposed to be able to
withstand this challenge, but tests suddenly revealed they were failing
in intense radiation environments.
All of a sudden, the scientists' backs were against a wall. There were
around 1,500 of these transistors used throughout the craft, and exactly
where was difficult to determine. According to the NYT, they fretted
that replacing them could cost up to one billion dollars and take years.
And if the Clipper didn't launch in its 21-day window in October, the
mission could be catastrophically delayed.
But there's another side to the radiation's effects: annealing. As
subsequent experiments showed, the heat from the radiation would
eventually cause lightly damaged transistor's atoms to spread out and
return to their original arrangement. In effect, they would partially
"heal themselves," Joe Stehly, the mission's Project System Engineer,
told the NYT.
With that in mind, if they could pare down the Europa Clipper's flybys
and sparingly use its electronic instruments, then maybe the mission
could be salvaged. This approach, however, would still be filled with
uncertainties, not to mention dramatically diminish the space probe's
scientific objectives.
But why settle for less? Jeff Srinivasan, the flight systems manager,
proposed taking samples of each type of MOSFET and packing them into a
"canary box" attached to the spacecraft. These would serve as early
warning systems alerting scientists to when they should shut off certain
electronics to avoid radiation damage.
"It was one of those that's so-crazy-it-might-work moments," Stehly told
the NYT.
Though engineers would ideally have years to make such a system, they
put it together in a month. And after rigorous assessments, it appears
it'll work even better than expected. Now, the mission — seemingly
against all odds — is slated to continue unaltered and launch next month.
And as it travels to Jupiter, no doubt scientists and engineers
throughout NASA will be crossing their fingers that the spacecraft's
systems will survive.
More on NASA: NASA Preparing to Launch Mission to World That "May Be
Habitable Today"
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