Join the Alien Search, login or register FREE on Aliens and Space Forum

Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site

En Route to Jupiter, NASA’s Europa Clipper Captures Images of Stars

By NASA
February 4 in NASA

https://www.aliensandspace.com/topic/16586-en-route-to-jupiter-nasa%E2%80%99s-europa-clipper-captures-images-of-stars/

Followers 0

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

This version of a mosaic captured by the star tracker cameras aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper on Dec. 4, 2024, features the names of stars within view of the cameras.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

This mosaic of a star field was made from three images captured Dec. 4, 2024, by star tracker cameras aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. Showing part of the constel-lation Corvus, it’s the first imagery of space the orbiter has captured since its launch on Oct. 14, 2024.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

The spacecraft’s star trackers help engineers orient the orbiter throughout its long journey to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

Three months after its launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency’s Europa Clipper has another 1.6 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) to go before it reaches Jupiter’s orbit in 2030 to take close-up images of the icy moon Europa with science cameras.

Meanwhile, a set of cameras serving a different purpose is snapping photos in the space between Earth and Jupiter. Called star trackers, the two imagers look for stars and use them like a compass to help mission controllers know the exact orientation of the spacecraft — information critical for pointing telecommunications antennas toward Earth and sending data back and forth smoothly.

In early December, the pair of star trackers (formally known as the stellar reference units) captured and transmitted Europa Clipper’s first imagery of space. The picture, composed of three shots, shows tiny pinpricks of light from stars 150 to 300 light-years away. The starfield represents only about 0.1% of the full sky around the spacecraft, but by mapping the stars in just that small slice of sky, the orbiter is able to determine where it is pointed and orient itself correctly.

The starfield includes the four brightest stars — Gienah, Algorab, Kraz, and Alchiba — of the constellation Corvus, which is Latin for “crow,” a bird in Greek mythology that was associated with Apollo.

Engineers on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission work with the spacecraft’s star trackers in a clean room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2022. Used for orienting the spacecraft, the star trackers are seen here with red covers to protect their lenses.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Hardware Checkout

Besides being interesting to stargazers, the photos signal the successful checkout of the star trackers. The spacecraft checkout phase has been going on since Europa Clipper launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on Oct. 14, 2024.

“The star trackers are engineering hardware and are always taking images, which are processed on board,” said Joanie Noonan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, who leads the mission’s guidance, navigation and control operations. “We usually don’t downlink photos from the trackers, but we did in this case because it’s a really good way to make sure the hardware — including the cameras and their lenses — made it safely through launch.”

Pointing the spacecraft correctly is not about navigation, which is a separate operation. But orientation using the star trackers is critical for telecommunications as well as for the science operations of the mission. Engineers need to know where the science instruments are pointed. That includes the sophisticated Europa Imaging System (EIS), which will collect images that will help scientists map and examine the moon’s mysterious fractures, ridges, and valleys. For at least the next three years, EIS has its protective covers closed.

Europa Clipper carries nine science instruments, plus the telecommunications equipment that will be used for a gravity science investigation. During the mission’s 49 flybys of Europa, the suite will gather data that will tell scientists if the icy moon and its internal ocean have the conditions to harbor life.

The spacecraft already is 53 million miles (85 million kilometers) from Earth, zipping along at 17 miles per second (27 kilometers per second) relative to the Sun, and soon will fly by Mars. On March 1, engineers will steer the craft in a loop around the Red Planet, using its gravity to gain speed.

More About Europa Clipper

Europa Clipper’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, managed the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Find more information about Europa Clipper here:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/

News Media Contacts

Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-287-4115
gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov

2025-014

Details

Last Updated

Feb 04, 2025

Related Terms

Keep Exploring

Discover Related Topics

Missions

Humans in Space

Climate Change

Solar System

View the full article

Quote

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Reply to this topic...

× Pasted as rich text. Paste as plain text instead

Only 75 emoji are allowed.

× Your link has been automatically embedded. Display as a link instead

× Your previous content has been restored. Clear editor

× You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Insert image from URL

https://www.aliensandspace.com/topic/16586-en-route-to-jupiter-nasa%E2%80%99s-europa-clipper-captures-images-of-stars/

Followers 0

Go to topic listing

Similar Topics
- NASA’s SPHEREx Takes First Images, Preps to Study Millions of Galaxies
  By NASA
  
  5 min read
  Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
  NASA’s SPHEREx, which will map millions of galaxies across the entire sky, captured one of its first exposures March 27. The observatory’s six detectors each captured one of these uncalibrated images, to which visible-light colors have been added to represent infrared wavelengths. SPHEREx’s complete field of view spans the top three images; the same area of the sky is also captured in the bottom three images. NASA/JPL-Caltech Processed with rainbow hues to represent a range of infrared wavelengths, the new pictures indicate the astrophysics space observatory is working as expected.
  NASA’s SPHEREx (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) has turned on its detectors for the first time in space. Initial images from the observatory, which launched March 11, confirm that all systems are working as expected.
  Although the new images are uncalibrated and not yet ready to use for science, they give a tantalizing look at SPHEREx’s wide view of the sky. Each bright spot is a source of light, like a star or galaxy, and each image is expected to contain more than 100,000 detected sources.
  There are six images in every SPHEREx exposure — one for each detector. The top three images show the same area of sky as the bottom three images. This is the observatory’s full field of view, a rectangular area about 20 times wider than the full Moon. When SPHEREx begins routine science operations in late April, it will take approximately 600 exposures every day.
  Each image in this uncalibrated SPHEREx exposure contains about 100,000 light sources, including stars and galaxies. The two insets at right zoom in on sections of one image, showcasing the telescope’s ability to capture faint, distant galaxies. These sections are processed in grayscale rather than visible-light color for ease of viewing.NASA/JPL-Caltech “Our spacecraft has opened its eyes on the universe,” said Olivier Doré, SPHEREx project scientist at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Southern California. “It’s performing just as it was designed to.”
  The SPHEREx observatory detects infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. To make these first images, science team members assigned a visible color to every infrared wavelength captured by the observatory. Each of the six SPHEREx detectors has 17 unique wavelength bands, for a total of 102 hues in every six-image exposure.
  Breaking down color this way can reveal the composition of an object or the distance to a galaxy. With that data, scientists can study topics ranging from the physics that governed the universe less than a second after its birth to the origins of water in our galaxy.
  “This is the high point of spacecraft checkout; it’s the thing we wait for,” said Beth Fabinsky, SPHEREx deputy project manager at JPL. “There’s still work to do, but this is the big payoff. And wow! Just wow!”
  During the past two weeks, scientists and engineers at JPL, which manages the mission for NASA, have executed a series of spacecraft checks that show all is well so far. In addition, SPHEREx’s detectors and other hardware have been cooling down to their final temperature of around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 210 degrees Celsius). This is necessary because heat can overwhelm the telescope’s ability to detect infrared light, which is sometimes called heat radiation. The new images also show that the telescope is focused correctly. Focusing is done entirely before launch and cannot be adjusted in space.
  “Based on the images we are seeing, we can now say that the instrument team nailed it,” said Jamie Bock, SPHEREx’s principal investigator at Caltech and JPL.
  How It Works
  Where telescopes like NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes were designed to target small areas of space in detail, SPHEREx is a survey telescope and takes a broad view. Combining its results with those of targeted telescopes will give scientists a more robust understanding of our universe.
  The observatory will map the entire celestial sky four times during its two-year prime mission. Using a technique called spectroscopy, SPHEREx will collect the light from hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies in more wavelengths any other all-sky survey telescope.
  Track the real-time location of NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory using the agency’s 3D visualization tool, Eyes on the Solar System. When light enters SPHEREx’s telescope, it’s directed down two paths that each lead to a row of three detectors. The observatory’s detectors are like eyes, and set on top of them are color filters, which are like color-tinted glasses. While a standard color filter blocks all wavelengths but one, like yellow- or rose-tinted glasses, the SPHEREx filters are more like rainbow-tinted glasses: The wavelengths they block change gradually from the top of the filter to the bottom.
  “I’m rendered speechless,” said Jim Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “There was an incredible human effort to make this possible, and our engineering team did an amazing job getting us to this point.”
  More About SPHEREx
  The SPHEREx mission is managed by JPL for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Caltech managed and integrated the instrument. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
  For more about SPHEREx, visit:
  https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/
  News Media Contact
  Calla Cofield
  Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
  626-808-2469
  calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
  2025-045
  Share
  Details
  Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms
  SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer) Astrophysics Galaxies Origin & Evolution of the Universe The Search for Life The Universe Explore More
  3 min read Discovery Alert: Four Little Planets, One Big Step
  The Discovery Four rocky planets much smaller than Earth orbit Barnard’s Star, the next closest…
  Article 13 hours ago 5 min read NASA Awards Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2025
  The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) recently named 24 new fellows to its…
  Article 1 day ago 2 min read Hubble Spots a Chance Alignment
  The subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is the stunning spiral galaxy NGC…
  Article 4 days ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
  Missions
  Humans in Space
  Climate Change
  Solar System
  View the full article
- Week in images: 24-28 March 2025
  By European Space Agency
  
  Week in images: 24-28 March 2025
  Discover our week through the lens
  View the full article
- NASA’s Webb Captures Neptune’s Auroras For First Time
  By NASA
  
  6 Min Read NASA’s Webb Captures Neptune’s Auroras For First Time
  At the left, an enhanced-color image of Neptune from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. At the right, that image is combined with data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Credits:
  NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Heidi Hammel (AURA), Henrik Melin (Northumbria University), Leigh Fletcher (University of Leicester), Stefanie Milam (NASA-GSFC) Long-sought auroral glow finally emerges under Webb’s powerful gaze
  For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured bright auroral activity on Neptune. Auroras occur when energetic particles, often originating from the Sun, become trapped in a planet’s magnetic field and eventually strike the upper atmosphere. The energy released during these collisions creates the signature glow.
  In the past, astronomers have seen tantalizing hints of auroral activity on Neptune, for example, in the flyby of NASA’s Voyager 2 in 1989. However, imaging and confirming the auroras on Neptune has long evaded astronomers despite successful detections on Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Neptune was the missing piece of the puzzle when it came to detecting auroras on the giant planets of our solar system.
  “Turns out, actually imaging the auroral activity on Neptune was only possible with Webb’s near-infrared sensitivity,” said lead author Henrik Melin of Northumbria University, who conducted the research while at the University of Leicester. “It was so stunning to not just see the auroras, but the detail and clarity of the signature really shocked me.”
  The data was obtained in June 2023 using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph. In addition to the image of the planet, astronomers obtained a spectrum to characterize the composition and measure the temperature of the planet’s upper atmosphere (the ionosphere). For the first time, they found an extremely prominent emission line signifying the presence of the trihydrogen cation (H3+), which can be created in auroras. In the Webb images of Neptune, the glowing aurora appears as splotches represented in cyan.
  Image A:
  Neptune’s Auroras – Hubble and Webb
  At the left, an enhanced-color image of Neptune from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. At the right, that image is combined with data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The cyan splotches, which represent auroral activity, and white clouds, are data from Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), overlayed on top of the full image of the planet from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Heidi Hammel (AURA), Henrik Melin (Northumbria University), Leigh Fletcher (University of Leicester), Stefanie Milam (NASA-GSFC) “H3+ has a been a clear signifier on all the gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus — of auroral activity, and we expected to see the same on Neptune as we investigated the planet over the years with the best ground-based facilities available,” explained Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Webb interdisciplinary scientist and leader of the Guaranteed Time Observation program for the Solar System in which the data were obtained. “Only with a machine like Webb have we finally gotten that confirmation.”
  The auroral activity seen on Neptune is also noticeably different from what we are accustomed to seeing here on Earth, or even Jupiter or Saturn. Instead of being confined to the planet’s northern and southern poles, Neptune’s auroras are located at the planet’s geographic mid-latitudes — think where South America is located on Earth.
  This is due to the strange nature of Neptune’s magnetic field, originally discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989 which is tilted by 47 degrees from the planet’s rotation axis. Since auroral activity is based where the magnetic fields converge into the planet’s atmosphere, Neptune’s auroras are far from its rotational poles.
  The ground-breaking detection of Neptune’s auroras will help us understand how Neptune’s magnetic field interacts with particles that stream out from the Sun to the distant reaches of our solar system, a totally new window in ice giant atmospheric science.
  From the Webb observations, the team also measured the temperature of the top of Neptune’s atmosphere for the first time since Voyager 2’s flyby. The results hint at why Neptune’s auroras remained hidden from astronomers for so long.
  “I was astonished — Neptune’s upper atmosphere has cooled by several hundreds of degrees,” Melin said. “In fact, the temperature in 2023 was just over half of that in 1989.”
  Through the years, astronomers have predicted the intensity of Neptune’s auroras based on the temperature recorded by Voyager 2. A substantially colder temperature would result in much fainter auroras. This cold temperature is likely the reason that Neptune’s auroras have remained undetected for so long. The dramatic cooling also suggests that this region of the atmosphere can change greatly even though the planet sits over 30 times farther from the Sun compared to Earth.
  Equipped with these new findings, astronomers now hope to study Neptune with Webb over a full solar cycle, an 11-year period of activity driven by the Sun’s magnetic field. Results could provide insights into the origin of Neptune’s bizarre magnetic field, and even explain why it’s so tilted.
  “As we look ahead and dream of future missions to Uranus and Neptune, we now know how important it will be to have instruments tuned to the wavelengths of infrared light to continue to study the auroras,” added Leigh Fletcher of Leicester University, co-author on the paper. “This observatory has finally opened the window onto this last, previously hidden ionosphere of the giant planets.”
  These observations, led by Fletcher, were taken as part of Hammel’s Guaranteed Time Observation program 1249. The team’s results have been published in Nature Astronomy.
  The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
  Downloads
  Click any image to open a larger version.
  View/Download all image products at all resolutions for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
  Read the research results published in Nature Astronomy.
  Media Contacts
  Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
  NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
  Hannah Braun- hbraun@stsci.edu
  Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
  Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
  Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
  Science
  Henrik Melin (Northumbria University)
  Related Information
  View more: Webb images of Neptune
  Watch: Visualization of Neptune’s tilted magnetic axis
  Learn more : about Neptune
  More Webb News
  More Webb Images
  Webb Science Themes
  Webb Mission Page
  Related For Kids
  About Neptune
  About the Solar System
  What is the Webb Telescope?
  SpacePlace for Kids
  En Español
  Ciencia de la NASA
  NASA en español
  Space Place para niños
  Keep Exploring Related Topics
  James Webb Space Telescope
  
  Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…
  
  Neptune
  
  Neptune Stories
  
  Our Solar System
  
  Share
  
  Details
  Last Updated Mar 25, 2025 Editor Stephen Sabia Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
  James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Astrophysics Goddard Space Flight Center Neptune Planetary Science Planets Science & Research The Solar System View the full article
- Hubble Captures a Neighbor’s Colorful Clouds
  By NASA
  
  Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 2 min read
  Hubble Captures a Neighbor’s Colorful Clouds
  This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features part of the Small Magellanic Cloud. ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
  Download this image
  
  Say hello to one of the Milky Way’s neighbors! This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a scene from one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is a dwarf galaxy located about 200,000 light-years away. Most of the galaxy resides in the constellation Tucana, but a small section crosses over into the neighboring constellation Hydrus.
  Thanks to its proximity, the SMC is one of only a few galaxies that are visible from Earth without the help of a telescope or binoculars. For viewers in the southern hemisphere and some latitudes in the northern hemisphere, the SMC resembles a piece of the Milky Way that has broken off, though in reality it’s much farther away than any part of our own galaxy.
  With its 2.4-meter mirror and sensitive instruments, Hubble’s view of the SMC is far more detailed and vivid than what humans can see. Researchers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to observe this scene through four different filters. Each filter permits different wavelengths of light, creating a multicolored view of dust clouds drifting across a field of stars. Hubble’s view, however, is much more zoomed-in than our eyes, allowing it to observe very distant objects. This image captures a small region of the SMC near the center of NGC 346, a star cluster that is home to dozens of massive young stars.
  Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
  Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
  NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
  Share
  
  Details
  Last Updated Mar 21, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
  Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Magellanic Clouds The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
  Hubble Space Telescope
  
  Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
  
  Hubble’s Night Sky Challenge
  
  Hearing Hubble
  
  Reshaping Our Cosmic View: Hubble Science Highlights
  
  View the full article
- Supervolcano eruption on Jupiter's Moon Io but how extreme was it?
  By USH
  
  Io, Jupiter’s famous volcanic moon, is already the most volcanically active place in the solar system. But between Halloween and Christmas of 2024, something happened that was extreme, even by Io’s standards.
  
  Its south pole erupted in a way astronomers weren’t even sure was possible. A super volcano exploded with such force that it was visible from space as a massive dark blotch in the atmosphere. In infrared, the eruption was so intense that it saturated scientific sensors.
  How Big Was This Eruption? To grasp the scale, imagine Io were the size of Earth. This super volcano would cover an area larger than Texas, larger than Egypt. The aftermath would trigger a global volcanic winter lasting years, possibly decades.
  The eruption unleashed energy equivalent to 260 Yellowstone's and its lava field could bury everything from New York to Kansas under 10 feet of molten rock or stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. Every minute, the eruption released energy equal to 1.5 million Hiroshima bombs.
  Just think about this: Earth’s most devastating volcanic event, the Siberian Traps eruption, lasted for a million years and led to one of the worst mass extinctions in history. Io’s super volcano, at its current rate, would surpass that in just 800 years. Over a million years, it could spew out the equivalent of 1% of Earth’s entire mantle. If the volume of this eruption were spread evenly across Earth, our planet’s landscape would be completely transformed in a matter of days.
  Even in a solar system filled with astonishing phenomena, Io continues to shock and surprise us.
  View the full article
Check out these Videos

Sign In

En Route to Jupiter, NASA’s Europa Clipper Captures Images of Stars

Recommended Posts

NASA