vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
REASON | Instruments – NASA's Europa Clipper
Jupiter’s magnetic field hurls atomic particles at Europa’s surface nonstop, creating compounds that ocean microbes might use. Thinner ice, or water passing through the ice, would help the compounds reach the ocean, improving the odds that Europa can sustain life.

“We’ve used ice-penetrating radar for decades. That’s how we know how thick Earth’s ice sheets are.

- Don Blankenship, principal investigator for REASON

How thick is Europa’s ice? “Some people think it’s a few kilometers thick, and lots of people think it’s tens of kilometers thick,” said REASON principal investigator Don Blankenship. REASON applies proven technology to the question. “We’ve used ice-penetrating radar for decades,” Blankenship said. “That’s how we know Earth’s ice sheets’ thickness.” Europa’s ice thickness is so important that several of the mission’s science investigations will measure it. Only through collaboration will those investigations get a solid answer.

Donald Blankenship

Principal Investigator

University of Texas Austin

Where is REASON on Clipper?

REASON highlighted in red on the Europa Clipper Spacecraft.

EIS

E-THEMIS

Europa-UVS

MISE

ECM

PIMS

Gravity/Radio Science

REASON

MASPEX

SUDA

Related News

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NASA's Europa Mission Begins with Selection of Science Instruments – NASA's Europa Clipper
“This is a giant step in our search for oases that could support life in our own celestial backyard,” said Curt Niebur, Europa program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We’re confident that this versatile set of science instruments will produce exciting discoveries on a much-anticipated mission.”
The NASA selectees are:
Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) -- principal investigator Dr. Joseph Westlake of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Maryland. This instrument works in conjunction with a magnetometer and is key to determining Europa's ice shell thickness, ocean depth, and salinity by correcting the magnetic induction signal for plasma currents around Europa.
Interior Characterization of Europa using Magnetometry (ICEMAG) -- principal investigator Dr. Carol Raymond of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California. This magnetometer will measure the magnetic field near Europa and – in conjunction with the PIMS instrument – infer the location, thickness and salinity of Europa’s subsurface ocean using multi-frequency electromagnetic sounding.
Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE) -- principal investigator Dr. Diana Blaney of JPL. This instrument will probe the composition of Europa, identifying and mapping the distributions of organics, salts, acid hydrates, water ice phases, and other materials to determine the habitability of Europa’s ocean.
Europa Imaging System (EIS) -- principal investigator Dr. Elizabeth Turtle of APL. The wide and narrow angle cameras on this instrument will map most of Europa at 50 meter (164 foot) resolution, and will provide images of areas of Europa’s surface at up to 100 times higher resolution. 
Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON) -- principal investigator Dr. Donald Blankenship of the University of Texas, Austin. This dual-frequency ice penetrating radar instrument is designed to characterize and sound Europa's icy crust from the near-surface to the ocean, revealing the hidden structure of Europa’s ice shell and potential water within. 
Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS) -- principal investigator Dr. Philip Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe.
Mission Dispatch: Using Radar to Study Earth and Europa – NASA's Europa Clipper
Ice-penetrating radar is more important than ever for monitoring Earth. “It shows us how glaciers and ice sheets are responding to climate change,” said Dustin Schroeder, a radioglaciologist at Stanford University and a member of the REASON science team. A radioglaciologist is someone who studies glaciers, ice sheets, ice caps, and icy moons using radar.
Researchers routinely fly planes with ice-penetrating radar over Greenland and Antarctica, whose combined ice sheets contain more than 99 percent of Earth’s freshwater ice. Ice-penetrating radars allow scientists to calculate the ice’s volume and how much oceans will rise as the ice melts. The radar observations provide essential inputs for computer models, allowing scientists to estimate future sea level rise and produce assessments for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Looking Into Europa’s Ice

The study of ice on Earth and Europa has a shared lineage, Schroeder says. One of the ice-penetrating radar systems now studying Earth’s ice was developed in the 1990s as a test model for studying Europa–part of a collaboration between REASON principal investigator Donald Blankenship, at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, and REASON deputy principal investigator Alina Moussessian at JPL.
REASON investigation scientist Trina Ray of JPL is eager to examine the ice of an ocean world beyond Earth. “We never know what we’ll learn the first time,” Ray says. “The radar easily penetrates ice but doesn’t go through water, so we hope REASON will tell us clearly where the ice ends and Europa’s ocean begins.”

Beyond Earth, Europa is considered one of the most promising places to look for current life within our solar system. Below Europa’s icy surface, evidence suggests there is a global ocean with twice as much water as all of Earth’s oceans combined. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The thickness of the ice is a key factor to determine whether Europa could sustain life. Theory and observation suggest that Europa's icy shell is around 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 kilometers) thick, overlying an ocean approximately 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) deep.
Europa Clipper Paper Model – NASA's Europa Clipper
This image of Europa was taken by the Galileo spacecraft under "low-Sun" illumination.

Terrain Shadows on Europa

An identical copy of Europa Clipper's propulsion module and electronics vault is lowered by crane in a static test tower.

Europa Clipper's Developmental Test Model

The inward-facing side of the Europa Clipper vault plate has drawings, and a microchip engraved with more than 2.6 million names.

Europa Clipper Vault Plate - Inward-Facing Side

Europa Clipper's ultraviolet spectrograph is delivered to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Ultraviolet Spectrograph Delivered to JPL 

Europa Clipper's propulsion module is offloaded from its transportation trailer following arrival at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Europa Clipper Propulsion Module 

An engineer makes an electrical connection to the sensor head for Europa Clipper’s dust analyzer.

Assembling the Sensor Head for Europa Clipper's Dust Analyzer

A 3D model of the Vault Plate.

Vault Plate Info Panel

This video shows the installation of one of the main computers of the spacecraft.

Main Computer Installation

This animation shows a 360 of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft and points out scientific instruments. 

Mission Animation: Spacecraft 360 with Instruments

This impact scar on Europa is about the size of the island of Hawaii.

Ancient Impact Basin on Europa 

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ECM | Instruments – NASA's Europa Clipper
The instrument will also measure the ice shell’s thickness.

Interact with an isolated view of the instrument.

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How It Works
How It Works
Jupiter rotates once every 10 hours, and its magnetic field spins right along with it. The magnetic field whips high-energy plasma along at almost the same rate. The plasma distorts the magnetic field near Europa, as does the spacecraft itself, and this affects magnetometer data.
But other science instruments will study plasma around Europa and learn how it affects the magnetic field. Engineers have modeled how the spacecraft will distort the magnetic field. The magnetometer team will remove those factors from their data to get a clearer and more accurate picture of Europa’s magnetic field. “What we want to extract is the field generated in Europa. That’s what we’re after,” said Margaret Kivelson, magnetometer team leader and a space physicist at UCLA and the University of Michigan.

“I’m just blown away by the quality of the people on this project.”

- Margaret Kivelson, magnetometer team lead, and a space physicist at UCLA and the University of Michigan

How We'll Use It
How We'll Use It
Europa doesn’t independently generate its own magnetic field. But time-variations of Jupiter’s magnetic field induce Europa to produce one, probably via electric currents flowing in a salty ocean beneath Europa’s ice. The magnetometer should allow scientists to confirm the ocean’s existence, and measure its depth and salinity as well as the ice shell’s thickness.
If Europa has an ocean, the thickness of the moon’s ice shell is critical to the ocean’s possible habitability. High-energy radiation alters Europa’s surface compounds. Thinner ice improves the odds that those surface compounds travel through the ice to the ocean. It would also enable ocean material to reach the surface more easily to be altered by Jupiter radiation before again migrating back to the ocean.
Meet the Team
Meet the Team

The ECM team poses for a photo in Europa Clipper's High Bay 2, with the spacecraft's magnetometer boom deployed in the background.
EIS | Instruments – NASA's Europa Clipper
EIS | Instruments – NASA's Europa Clipper

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Europa Clipper

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EIS

Visible-light cameras will map Europa’s surface in high-resolution color and stereo.

ASSEMBLY STATUS

Step 4

Environmental Testing

Tests are conducted to demonstrate that the Europa Clipper spacecraft can survive the environments it will experience in flight.

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Introduction
The Europa Imaging System, or EIS (pronounced “ice”), will capture Europa’s valleys, ridges, dark bands, and other features in detail. EIS has a wide-angle camera (WAC) and a narrow-angle camera (NAC). Each camera has an eight-megapixel sensor sensitive to visible wavelengths of light, and a small range of near-infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. The NAC pivots 60 degrees on two axes. Both cameras will produce stereoscopic images, and have filters to acquire color images.
EIS will map about 90% of Europa at 330 feet (100 meters) per pixel. That’s six times more of Europa’s surface at five times better resolution than the finest images from the Galileo spacecraft. When the spacecraft is close to Europa during flybys, EIS will produce images with a resolution 100 times better. 
Quick Facts
Quick Facts

Visible-light cameras

A wide-angle camera and a narrow-angle camera

Eight-megapixel sensor in each camera

Narrow-angle camera has a gimbal to pivot 60 degrees on two axes

EIS will map 90% of Europa at 330 feet (100 meters) per pixel (six times more of Europa’s surface, at five times better resolution than ever before)

Can image individual surface features at as little as one and a half feet (half a meter) per pixel

Both cameras will produce stereoscopic images

Both cameras will produce color images

Interact with an isolated view of the instrument.

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How It Works
How It Works
The wide-angle camera, or WAC, sees large portions of Europa’s landscape.
Potential Plumes on Europa Could Come From Water in the Crust – NASA's Europa Clipper
"The comet or asteroid hitting the ice shell was basically a big experiment which we're using to construct hypotheses to test," said co-author Don Blankenship, senior research scientist at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) and principal investigator of the radar instrument, REASON (Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface), that will fly aboard NASA's upcoming Europa Clipper spacecraft. "Our model makes specific predictions we can test using data from the radar and other instruments on Europa Clipper."
The model indicates that as Europa's water partially froze into ice following the impact, leftover pockets of water could have been created in the moon's surface. These salty water pockets can move sideways through Europa's ice shell by melting adjacent regions of ice and consequently become even saltier in the process.
A Salty Driving Force
The model proposes that when a migrating brine pocket reached the center of Manannán Crater, it became stuck and began freezing, generating pressure that eventually resulted in a plume, estimated to have been over a mile high (1.6 kilometers). The eruption of this plume left a distinguishing mark: a spider-shaped feature on Europa's surface that was observed by Galileo imaging and incorporated into the researchers' model.
"Even though plumes generated by brine pocket migration would not provide direct insight into Europa's ocean, our findings suggest that Europa's ice shell itself is very dynamic," said co-lead author Joana Voigt, a graduate research assistant at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.
The relatively small size of the plume that would form at Manannán indicates that impact craters probably can't explain the source of other, larger plumes on Europa that have been hypothesized based on data from Galileo and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, researchers said. But the process modeled for the Manannán eruption could happen on other icy bodies - even without an impact event.
"The work is exciting, because it supports the growing body of research showing there could be multiple kinds of plumes on Europa," said Robert Pappalardo of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and project scientist of the Europa Clipper mission.
Europa Clipper's Thermal Imager Delivered to JPL – NASA's Europa Clipper
In January 2022 the Arizona State University team took test images with the E-THEMIS camera from the rooftop of the Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building 4 on the Arizona State University Tempe campus. E-THEMIS made temperature-sensing images at midday, in late afternoon, and after sunset. These images revealed how the temperature of the buildings and landscape responded to changes in sunlight as the day progressed. 

Besides identifying any warmer areas on Europa's surface, E-THEMIS images will also help scientists determine the physical state of the icy surface. As parts of Europa's landscape cool after local sunset, areas of solid ice will stay warmer longer, while those with a granular texture will lose heat more rapidly. By mapping the rates of cooling across the surface, scientists will better understand Europa’s small-scale properties. This technique might even help to identify interesting sites for a possible future lander. 
Europa Clipper is a spacecraft sent to investigate Jupiter's ice-shrouded moon Europa. It is planned 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. These planetary flybys use the masses of Mars and Earth to boost the spacecraft's velocity so it can reach the Jupiter system.
After entering orbit at Jupiter, the spacecraft will make about 50 flybys of Europa to investigate whether the moon could harbor conditions suitable for life.
Read more about the delivery here. 

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10 Things to Know About Europa Clipper's Science Instruments

Europa Clipper's Thermal Imager Captures Breathtaking "First Light" Images

Meet Europa Clipper

NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will conduct a detailed survey of Jupiter's moon Europa to determine whether there are places below the moon's surface that could support life.

Meet the spacecraft ›

Meet the Instrument

E-THEMIS

Why Europa?

Scientists are almost certain that hidden beneath the icy surface of Europa is a saltwater ocean thought to contain about twice as much water as Earth’s global ocean.
Europa-UVS | Instruments – NASA's Europa Clipper
Quick Facts
Quick Facts

Mass
19.6 kilograms

Operating Power
8.5 Watts

Dimensions
35.7 centimeters x 36.2 centimeters x 15.8 centimeters

Spectral Range
55 - 210 nanometers

Spectral Resolution
<0.6 nanometers (point source), <1.2 nanometers (extended source); resolving power λ/Δλ= 220

Spatial Resolution
0.16 degrees (Airglow Port), 0.06 degrees (High-spatial-resolution Port)

Field of View
0.1 degrees x 7.3 degrees + 0.2 degrees x 0.2 degrees (7.5 degrees full length)

Effective Area
0.6 centimeters² @ 125 nanometers

Telescope/Spectrograph
Off-axis primary/Rowland circle mount

Detector Type
2D MCP (solar blind), Csl photocathode, cross-delay-line (XDL) readout, full array size 4096 spectral x 4096 spatial x 256 PHD

Spectral Cube Size
1900 (spectral) x 1150 (spatial), maximum active area

Radiation Mitigation
Contiguous High-Z shielding (4𝛑 sr @detector and electronics)

Interact with an isolated view of the instrument.

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How It Works
How It Works
“Light enters a telescope and bounces off a mirror,” said Kurt Retherford, a staff scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and principal investigator for Europa-UVS. “The instrument focuses the light through a slit. Then the light lands on a grating that disperses the light across a detector,” he said. “It’s like a digital image you take with a cell phone camera.”

“It’s much like a digital image that you get on your cell phone camera.”

- Kurt Retherford, Europa-UVS principal investigator

But unlike a cell phone, Europa-UVS sees ultraviolet light, and records more than pictures. Different elements emit and absorb specific wavelengths of light. The instrument records how bright the light is at each of those wavelengths.
NASA's Europa Clipper Builds Hardware, Moves Toward Assembly – NASA's Europa Clipper
They will be attached to the propulsion module being built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. The propulsion module core consists of two stacked cylinders that together stand almost 10 feet (3 meters) high and hold the propulsion tanks and 16 rocket engines that will propel Europa Clipper once it leaves Earth’s atmosphere.

Technicians at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center check the fit of the cylinders of the propulsion module core of NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft on Oct. 15, 2020. The stacked cylinders hold the propulsion tanks and rocket engines that will propel Europa Clipper once it leaves Earth's atmosphere. Credit: NASA/Barbara Lambert

The giant cylinders embody the cooperative effort needed to put a spacecraft like this together. They were built by APL and shipped to JPL for installation of the Heat Redistribution System tubing, part of a system that will keep the spacecraft thermally controlled. The cylinders were then sent to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for installation of the propulsion subsystem. There are 400 welded connections, each of them X-rayed for quality control, which are key to successfully installing the propulsion subsystem.
APL is also building the telecommunications module for radio communications with Earth and a radiation monitor to gauge the size of the electron blast that is hitting the spacecraft during its 40-plus flybys of Europa.
At JPL, construction is underway on several elements of the flight system, including the protective vault that shields critical electronic hardware from Jupiter’s intense radiation. JPL is also building and testing the avionics subsystem, which includes the flight computer, the power switching and distribution hardware, the flight software needed to perform the science mission, and the ground system tools necessary to fly the mission. Also being built is ground support equipment that will be used to assemble and test Europa Clipper’s large pieces of flight hardware.
“It’s a very exciting time for the team, seeing the fruits of their work that will be orbiting Jupiter in a few years,” said Europa Clipper Deputy Project Manager Jordan Evans of JPL. “Even in the face of COVID-19, the team is firing on all cylinders.
E-THEMIS | Instruments – NASA's Europa Clipper
Warmer ice could also mean Europa's suspected ocean is closer to the surface in that location.
Also, when part of Europa rotates out of sunlight, thermal inertia causes granular material to cool faster than large blocks. E-THEMIS will record surface cooling rates to learn about the texture of Europa’s surface. Mapping surface temperature and water near the surface will help to understand Europa’s small-scale properties and might even help to find sites for a possible future lander. “You don’t want the lander to sink into snow-like fluff, or land on a surface so hard that it can’t scrape or drill anything,” Piqueux said.
Meet the Team
Meet the Team
E-THEMIS principal investigator Phil Christensen is a planetary geologist at Arizona State University. “I’m most excited for E-THEMIS to detect warmer locations where liquid water is near the surface. We might someday land in one of those spots and send a probe into Europa’s water.”
Julie Rathbun is a planetary scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and a member of the E-THEMIS team. “One of E-THEMIS’s strenghts is it looks in different wavelengths,” she said. Shorter wavelengths are more sensitive to warmer material, while longer wavelengths are more sensitive to cooler material. “Because there are different temperatures on the surface, we can figure out what percent of the surface is solid ice versus something more granulated.”

Philip Christensen

Principal Investigator

Arizona State University

Where is E-THEMIS on Clipper?

E-THEMIS highlighted in red on the Europa Clipper Spacecraft.

EIS

E-THEMIS

Europa-UVS

MISE

ECM

PIMS

Gravity/Radio Science

REASON

MASPEX

SUDA

Related News

Members of the media put on “bunny suits” on April 11, 2024, to see Europa Clipper up close at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Media Get Close-Up of NASA's Jupiter-Bound Europa Clipper