Yesterday, 09:39 AM
(Yesterday, 07:38 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: You know, after growing up with all of the Sci-Fi movies of my generation, I would have thought that warp drive travel would be much more commonplace by now. 5.5 years to get there? What are they doing, just drifting?
Well, I was curious about that myself so I checked the NASA website. I didn't see a speed mentioned , but they say the spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles to reach its orbit position in 5.5 years. There are 8,760 hours in a year, so there would be 48,180 hours in 5.5 years. 1.8B divided by 48,180 is 37,359.9 miles per hour. That would be the average, of course. I imagine the speed will vary some when they slingshot around Jupiter versus periods of straight-line flight. And, reading on the site it's not a direct path there (and apologies, I made the below text white so it would show up on the night mode that I and I assume most others use, I'm not sure how to cut and paste text and get it to be the default color of this site):
The spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) on a trajectory that will leverage the power of gravity assists, first to Mars in four months and then back to Earth for another gravity assist flyby in 2026. After it begins orbiting Jupiter in April 2030, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times.
So it doesn't even leave earth's orbit permanently until 2026. Some more specifics about the mission:
- The largest spacecraft NASA ever built for a mission headed to another planet, Europa Clipper also is the first NASA mission dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth.
- Coming as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers) to the surface, Europa Clipper is equipped with nine science instruments and a gravity experiment, including an ice-penetrating radar, cameras, and a thermal instrument to look for areas of warmer ice and any recent eruptions of water.
- Europa Clipper also carries the largest solar arrays NASA has ever used for an interplanetary mission. With arrays extended, the spacecraft spans 100 feet (30.5 meters) from end to end. With propellant loaded, it weighs about 13,000 pounds (5,900 kilograms).
Fascinating stuff.
