NASA's $5 billion Europa Clipper mission


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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."

 

https://futurism.com/nasa-disastrous-flaw-spacecraft

 

https://spacenews.com/europa-clipper-passes-pre-launch-review/

Europa Clipper passes pre-launch review

WASHINGTON — A multibillion-dollar NASA mission to a potentially habitable moon of Jupiter has been cleared to begin final preparations for an October launch after resolving concerns about electronics on the spacecraft.

NASA announced Sept. 9 that the Europa Clipper mission has passed a review called Key Decision Point E. That allows the mission to move ahead into final preparations for a launch in a three-week window that opens Oct. 10 on a Falcon Heavy from the Kennedy Space Center.

The mission passed the review after months of intense study to determine if transistors used on various parts of the spacecraft could handle the radiation environment around Jupiter. The agency learned in May that tests of the transistors, known as metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors or MOSFETs, for a non-NASA customer showed they could fail at radiation doses lower than qualified for.

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