Description
Figure A
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NASA's Europa Clipper, en route to the Jupiter system to investigate the icy moon Europa, conducted a critical test of its radar instrument during a flyby of Mars on March 1, 2025. During the testing, the instrument received echoes of its very-high-frequency radar signals that engineers processed to develop this image, called a radargram.
The image was made using radar signals that bounced off Mars. What looks like a skyline is the outline of the topography. Features seen in the radargram include contributions from the topographic features both along and near the ground track (the path below the spacecraft as it passed overhead), such as impact craters, hills, and steep slopes. The 560-mile-long (900-kilometer-long) section of terrain profiled in this radargram is near Mars' equator.
The Europa Clipper radar instrument, REASON (Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface), is designed to see into the icy crust of Europa. Though the rocky Martian surface does not allow much penetration by the radar signals, the clarity of the radargram image indicates REASON was performing as expected during the Mars flyby, boding well for future observations at Europa.
As Europa Clipper zipped by the Red Planet – starting at 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) down to 550 miles (884 kilometers) above the surface – REASON sent and received radio waves for about 40 minutes. In comparison, at Europa the instrument will operate as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers) from the moon's surface.
Figure A is an image captured by NASA's Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) that shows the terrain Europa Clipper flew over while collecting the REASON data. The horizontal white line indicates the ground track flown by Europa Clipper. (Credit for this image is NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU.)
Europa Clipper launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 14, 2024, and will arrive at the Jupiter system in 2030 to conduct about 50 flybys of Europa. The mission's main science goal is to determine whether there are places below Europa's surface that could support life. The mission's three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon's icy shell and its surface 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.
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