This mission was originally going to fly on SLS (mandated by congress) but it was determined that SLS vibrates too much with the solid rocket boosters and redesigning the spacecraft to tolerate the vibrations would have cost an estimated $1B more. It's estimated switching to falcon heavy saved over two billion dollars in launch costs, though at the expense of it taking 2.5 years longer to reach its destination.
It's also important to note, that switching to FH allowed for an earlier launch, so this 2.5 years gets eaten away by the faster launch timing (SLS launch timing would be around 2027).
SLS timing actually might be right around the same time, since they have one essentially lying around because Orion isn't ready and they're already thinking about doing a make-work SLS mission before the landing anyway because EUS also isn't going to be ready and they don't have enough ICPS, but letting SLS sit around for 5 years would look terrible, and so on.
But they couldn't know this beforehand and that's just the kind of thing Clipper wanted to get away from: Being a playing ball on the field of random chance and Artemis office politics.
That one would still go after Artemis II. And because SLS design ignored the ability to process the vehicle fast, the next flight must be pretty much a year away from the preceding one. And EC requires upper stage too.
It's actually kinda funny with sci-fi movies now that Falcons land nearly daily, is that such a thing would never be an issue anymore.
Any movie, moving forward, still relying on solid boosters to put something to Mars as a one time moment only, would become hilariously unrealistic even for sci-fi.
This actually exists. It's a fanfiction of "Martian", where the main character gets stranded on Mars, except he is surrounded by Starships filled with supplies, so the writer has to make some new stuff up to make it more exciting.
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/the-martian-starship/
The idea that rather than every single *ounce* being meticulously accounted for, we are shipping so much cargo off-planet that tons and tons of stuff can slip through the cracks. And even better, in the long run, it doesn't even matter, since that stuff *will* get used up eventually.
Another option NASA considered was to use Delta 4 Heavy. Since that's less powerful than Falcon Heavy, the spacecraft would have needed a gravitational assist from Venus. Passing that much closer to the sun would have required extra attention to thermal protection.
The main thing is they need to be SUPER reliable. Because obviously you are not gonna swap them out if they fail. We actually use off the shelf lithium ion cells. We buy thousands of them, and put them through a rigorous screening and testing program, only picking the very best ones. Then hundreds of those get put into a large aluminum case and electrical connections are made. Electromagnetic interference protection, and radiation hardening is a big part of the design. Then the whole battery (several were made) goes through a a bunch of tests. It goes into a vacuum chamber and is subjected to hot and cold cycles. It is charged and discharged numerous times at different temperatures. It is put on a vibration table and subjected to the same accelerations that it will experience during launch. It is “shocked”, or put on a table that is smacked by an air canon. Basically we try to simulate all the conditions that the battery will go through during its whole mission from launch to orbiting Jupiter. The batteries for this mission cost millions of dollars.
This is what happens when they screw up moving an expensive satellite. Technician forgot to bolt NOAA=19 to its platform before it was rotated to a horizontal orientation. $135 million in damage.
https://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/04noaanreport/
I know how that feels.
In the early 1970s I was calibrating a science instrument prior to launch. It was about the size of a shoebox that weighed about 15 pounds. It was on a workbench. I accidently bumped the workbench and it fell about 30" to the lab floor. I had to carry on a plane to the manufacturer in Boston to determine if it had been damaged. Luckily it checked out OK. That thing was worth about $500K in today's money. Very dumb of me.
We can work to reduce mistakes, and that work certainly helps, but some mistakes will always slip through.
"Not making fuck-ups on the ground, is not an option. Humans fuck up, period. Human institutions fuck up. Human processes intended to prevent fuck-ups, fuck up. This cannot be avoided no matter how much time and resources you expend in the effort, though NASA and the rest of the space industry certainly try." - John Schilling
The common theory that I see nowadays is that the DOD purposely said Zuma failed. They have done this before with launches and then amateur astronomers find an object in space in orbit with an inclination matching the "failed" satellite.
Neither NASA nor SpaceX officially confirmed the loss of Zuma. At the time it has been speculated that it wasn’t lost (at least not unintentionally).
Edit: DoD, not NASA
Edit: Sorry, I may remember wrong about the speculation. SpaceX confirmed that the F9 performed nominally, but refused to comment if the satellite were lost or not. The speculation was that the second stage gave the command to the payload adapter or to the satellite built by Northrop Grumann, but the payload adapter or the satellite possibly didn’t detached and reentered the atmosphere still attached to the second stage.
Yeah you’re right, it was the DoD ([https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/1414194/department-of-defense-press-briefing-by-pentagon-chief-spokesperson-dana-w-whit/](https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/1414194/department-of-defense-press-briefing-by-pentagon-chief-spokesperson-dana-w-whit/), but my point still stands. They didn’t comment the mission because it was classified.
I was just reading on this the other day. Apparently DoD was able to eventually get the satellite separated from the payload adapter but it was too late and they couldn't recover the mission.
It has two large solar arrays, with a combined are over 100 m^(2) and outputing up to ~1 kW at Jupiter. They are designed to provide 700 W at the end of mission, assuming 30% degredation from radiation.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-024-01070-5
I was about to comment at how surprised i was at their inefficiency, mine do way better, then the morning fog wore off and I remembered that oh yeah, distance...
Efficiency would be the measure of how much of the available insolation is converted to usable power. It's likely the PV cells used on this mission are much more efficient than most residential or commercial PV cells in use on the Earth's surface.
I wonder how viable will thousands of m2 mirrors/foil will be viable to reflect and focus light to a solar panel will be with Starship. At some point, that has to be simpler and lighter than making such a big solar panel.
RTG was evaluated but ultimately it uses huge solar panels since they have become efficient enough to become a viable option, being also much much cheaper helps
Juno used solar panels too, so this already has a decent TRL. Jupiter's radiation belt will eventually cook the panels, but clipper doesn't exactly have a 40 year mission so don't really need RTGs.
Noting that it was Thomas Zurbuchen who pressed the move from SLS to FH. Congress was behind the demand for SLS, but relented due to the high cost savings from going with FH. Also, I believe that $5 Billion is the all-in cost, including operating the mission, and is not the direct cost of the craft itself.
Although Falcon 9 has proven itself to be extremely trustworthy, seeing a $5 billion payload launch on a rocket that will have flown only ten times is a little bit nerve racking even though it is closely related to F9. Very exciting mission indeed though
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[DoD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l72e97q "Last usage")|US Department of Defense|
|[EUS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l72zf5a "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage|
|[ICPS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l72zf5a "Last usage")|Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage|
|[NOAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l70uwb0 "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate|
|NRHO|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit|
|[NRO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l70danu "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office|
| |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO|
|[RTG](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l729y56 "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator|
|[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l739dd3 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[TRL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l729y56 "Last usage")|Technology Readiness Level|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
----------------
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^([Thread #12835 for this sub, first seen 4th Jun 2024, 03:31])
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This mission was originally going to fly on SLS (mandated by congress) but it was determined that SLS vibrates too much with the solid rocket boosters and redesigning the spacecraft to tolerate the vibrations would have cost an estimated $1B more. It's estimated switching to falcon heavy saved over two billion dollars in launch costs, though at the expense of it taking 2.5 years longer to reach its destination.
It's also important to note, that switching to FH allowed for an earlier launch, so this 2.5 years gets eaten away by the faster launch timing (SLS launch timing would be around 2027).
SLS timing actually might be right around the same time, since they have one essentially lying around because Orion isn't ready and they're already thinking about doing a make-work SLS mission before the landing anyway because EUS also isn't going to be ready and they don't have enough ICPS, but letting SLS sit around for 5 years would look terrible, and so on. But they couldn't know this beforehand and that's just the kind of thing Clipper wanted to get away from: Being a playing ball on the field of random chance and Artemis office politics.
That one would still go after Artemis II. And because SLS design ignored the ability to process the vehicle fast, the next flight must be pretty much a year away from the preceding one. And EC requires upper stage too.
I’m guessing NASA would take that trade off every time
unless you're trying to get some food to mars in a hurry
Don't panic, Space Pirate Dr Watney.
It's actually kinda funny with sci-fi movies now that Falcons land nearly daily, is that such a thing would never be an issue anymore. Any movie, moving forward, still relying on solid boosters to put something to Mars as a one time moment only, would become hilariously unrealistic even for sci-fi.
This actually exists. It's a fanfiction of "Martian", where the main character gets stranded on Mars, except he is surrounded by Starships filled with supplies, so the writer has to make some new stuff up to make it more exciting. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/the-martian-starship/
"Oops, we have so much cargo margin we accidentally sent Watney 100T of pasta." Glorious.
Forgot to pick "kg" on the list when the default was "t" or something. Shitty UI, I can see that happening.
The idea that rather than every single *ounce* being meticulously accounted for, we are shipping so much cargo off-planet that tons and tons of stuff can slip through the cracks. And even better, in the long run, it doesn't even matter, since that stuff *will* get used up eventually.
This is amazing. Thank you!
I wonder if the extra travel time increases the risk profile of the mission in any way. Seems like a very easy trade off though.
I’m sure it does a bit, just based on having a longer time for a freak micrometeoroid to come and wreck shit up. Fingers crossed it remains safe!
That's too much of an stocastic risk. I would be more concerned about how radiation is going to degrade the electronics.
Another option NASA considered was to use Delta 4 Heavy. Since that's less powerful than Falcon Heavy, the spacecraft would have needed a gravitational assist from Venus. Passing that much closer to the sun would have required extra attention to thermal protection.
I worked on a major component of this. It's cool to have a small part in something going to such a far-away place.
Very cool! I hope you designed in some space for me. I can’t wait to go home.
Obligatory ‘username checks out’
Cool! Can you share any more details? Very fascinating stuff.
The batteries.
Cool! What's the most interesting/most difficult aspect of the batteries on Europa Clipper?
The main thing is they need to be SUPER reliable. Because obviously you are not gonna swap them out if they fail. We actually use off the shelf lithium ion cells. We buy thousands of them, and put them through a rigorous screening and testing program, only picking the very best ones. Then hundreds of those get put into a large aluminum case and electrical connections are made. Electromagnetic interference protection, and radiation hardening is a big part of the design. Then the whole battery (several were made) goes through a a bunch of tests. It goes into a vacuum chamber and is subjected to hot and cold cycles. It is charged and discharged numerous times at different temperatures. It is put on a vibration table and subjected to the same accelerations that it will experience during launch. It is “shocked”, or put on a table that is smacked by an air canon. Basically we try to simulate all the conditions that the battery will go through during its whole mission from launch to orbiting Jupiter. The batteries for this mission cost millions of dollars.
Crane operator job req: must have balls of steel.
This is what happens when they screw up moving an expensive satellite. Technician forgot to bolt NOAA=19 to its platform before it was rotated to a horizontal orientation. $135 million in damage. https://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/04noaanreport/
I know how that feels. In the early 1970s I was calibrating a science instrument prior to launch. It was about the size of a shoebox that weighed about 15 pounds. It was on a workbench. I accidently bumped the workbench and it fell about 30" to the lab floor. I had to carry on a plane to the manufacturer in Boston to determine if it had been damaged. Luckily it checked out OK. That thing was worth about $500K in today's money. Very dumb of me.
We can work to reduce mistakes, and that work certainly helps, but some mistakes will always slip through. "Not making fuck-ups on the ground, is not an option. Humans fuck up, period. Human institutions fuck up. Human processes intended to prevent fuck-ups, fuck up. This cannot be avoided no matter how much time and resources you expend in the effort, though NASA and the rest of the space industry certainly try." - John Schilling
And I bet because it's all Union labor no one even got fired 😡
Weird time to bring up anti labour sentiment
Everybody: mistahclean123: “Unions, amirite?!??”
YOU DROPPED WHAT?!
Yeah…that’s coming out of your paycheck…
I guess that NRO payload they (the NRO) lost might have cost more. We'll never know..
Zuma was estimated at $3.5B. Clipper is very likely worth more.
Joker burning his billion dollar cash mountain moment
lost … or was it
gasp!
The common theory that I see nowadays is that the DOD purposely said Zuma failed. They have done this before with launches and then amateur astronomers find an object in space in orbit with an inclination matching the "failed" satellite.
Yep
Neither NASA nor SpaceX officially confirmed the loss of Zuma. At the time it has been speculated that it wasn’t lost (at least not unintentionally). Edit: DoD, not NASA Edit: Sorry, I may remember wrong about the speculation. SpaceX confirmed that the F9 performed nominally, but refused to comment if the satellite were lost or not. The speculation was that the second stage gave the command to the payload adapter or to the satellite built by Northrop Grumann, but the payload adapter or the satellite possibly didn’t detached and reentered the atmosphere still attached to the second stage.
NASA had nothing to do with ZUMA, so it had nothing to confirm or deny.
Yeah you’re right, it was the DoD ([https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/1414194/department-of-defense-press-briefing-by-pentagon-chief-spokesperson-dana-w-whit/](https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/1414194/department-of-defense-press-briefing-by-pentagon-chief-spokesperson-dana-w-whit/), but my point still stands. They didn’t comment the mission because it was classified.
I was just reading on this the other day. Apparently DoD was able to eventually get the satellite separated from the payload adapter but it was too late and they couldn't recover the mission.
Zuma was less nor was it flying on FH.
Can you remind me which that was? Don’t remember and can’t seem to figure out what to Google.
zuma
If by 'they' you mean SpaceX, they did not lose anything. Whomever made the cargo interface was to blame for that one.
No, I said the nro.
Don't have Norhtrup Grumman or any third party insist on their stupid adapter.
What is the power supply, RTG's?
It has two large solar arrays, with a combined are over 100 m^(2) and outputing up to ~1 kW at Jupiter. They are designed to provide 700 W at the end of mission, assuming 30% degredation from radiation. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-024-01070-5
I was about to comment at how surprised i was at their inefficiency, mine do way better, then the morning fog wore off and I remembered that oh yeah, distance...
Efficiency would be the measure of how much of the available insolation is converted to usable power. It's likely the PV cells used on this mission are much more efficient than most residential or commercial PV cells in use on the Earth's surface.
Yeah I know I just had an early morning brain fart and wondered how they were only getting a kw from 100m^2
I wonder how viable will thousands of m2 mirrors/foil will be viable to reflect and focus light to a solar panel will be with Starship. At some point, that has to be simpler and lighter than making such a big solar panel.
Thank you! From the diagrams in that link, it looks like the solar panels are not attached yet in this photo.
Thanks for the info, I think I see a mount for one.
RTG was evaluated but ultimately it uses huge solar panels since they have become efficient enough to become a viable option, being also much much cheaper helps
you also avoid handling issues with RTGs. they are spicy meatballs
This also avoids all the "fun" with certification. It's known to be bureaucracy at it's worst.
Juno used solar panels too, so this already has a decent TRL. Jupiter's radiation belt will eventually cook the panels, but clipper doesn't exactly have a 40 year mission so don't really need RTGs.
Noting that it was Thomas Zurbuchen who pressed the move from SLS to FH. Congress was behind the demand for SLS, but relented due to the high cost savings from going with FH. Also, I believe that $5 Billion is the all-in cost, including operating the mission, and is not the direct cost of the craft itself.
Although Falcon 9 has proven itself to be extremely trustworthy, seeing a $5 billion payload launch on a rocket that will have flown only ten times is a little bit nerve racking even though it is closely related to F9. Very exciting mission indeed though
As opposed to one that has flown once. /s
Has FH flown 10x already?
It has flown nine times but the GOES-U mission is set for later this month, so Europa Clipper will be the 11th flight
Awesome, thanks. Yeah, Im sure it will be fine, but I won’t feel safe until booster separation. Haha
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[DoD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l72e97q "Last usage")|US Department of Defense| |[EUS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l72zf5a "Last usage")|Exploration Upper Stage| |[ICPS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l72zf5a "Last usage")|Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage| |[NOAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l70uwb0 "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate| |NRHO|Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit| |[NRO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l70danu "Last usage")|(US) National Reconnaissance Office| | |Near-Rectilinear Orbit, see NRHO| |[RTG](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l729y56 "Last usage")|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator| |[SLS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l739dd3 "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[TRL](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d7mk44/stub/l729y56 "Last usage")|Technology Readiness Level| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(*Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented* )[*^by ^request*](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/3mz273//cvjkjmj) ^(8 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1d9ooit)^( has 21 acronyms.) ^([Thread #12835 for this sub, first seen 4th Jun 2024, 03:31]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/SpaceXLounge) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Europapa clipper
Europapa Clapper?