NASA’s Europa Clipper, shown in this illustration updated in December 2020, will fly around Jupiter on an elliptical path, diving close to its moon Europa on each flyby to collect data. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA‘S Europe The Clipper mission aims to solve problems with transistor radiation as it prepares to launch an expedition to Jupiter to investigate the habitability of Europa.
The mission faces challenges with radiation-hardened transistors, which have been found to be less resilient to Jupiter’s intense radiation. Tests at several NASA centers are aimed at addressing these issues.
Preparations for the launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission are underway. The spacecraft was delivered to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida last May and the team has successfully installed the high-gain antenna.
Engineers on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission continue to perform extensive tests of transistors that help control the flow of electricity on the spacecraft. The specific versions used by Europa Clipper are radiation-resistant and are designed to withstand 100 to 300 kilorads, or krads (a “rad” is a unit of measurement for absorbed dose of ionizing radiation).
The mission team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages the mission, is reviewing test data that indicates that some transistors can be affected by significantly lower levels of radiation under certain conditions. They are concerned that some of these components may not be able to withstand the radiation of the Jovian system, which is the most intense radiation environment in the solar system.
Radiation Challenges and Continuous Analysis
Testing is also being conducted at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. APL designed the spacecraft’s main body in collaboration with JPL and NASA Goddard.
The transistor issue came to light in May when the mission team was notified that similar components were failing at lower than expected radiation doses. An industry alert was issued in June 2024 to notify users of the issue. The manufacturer is working with the mission team to support ongoing radiation testing and analysis efforts to better understand the risk of using these components on the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
Sustainability and solutions for electronics
Test data obtained so far indicates that some transistors are likely to fail in the high-radiation environment near Jupiter and its moon Europa, because the components are not as radiation-resistant as expected. The team is working to determine how many transistors might be susceptible and how they will perform in flight. NASA is evaluating options to maximize the lifespan of the transistors in the Jupiter system. A preliminary analysis is expected to be completed by late July.
Radiation-hardened electronics are used throughout the industry to protect spacecraft from radiation damage that can occur in space. The Jupiter system is particularly damaging to spacecraft because its enormous magnetic field—20,000 times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field—traps charged particles and accelerates them to very high energies, creating intense radiation that bombards Europa and other inner moons. It appears that the problem that could affect the transistors on Europa Clipper is a phenomenon that the industry has not been aware of and represents a newly discovered gap in the industry standard radiation qualification of transistor wafer lots.
Mission Objectives and Future Prospects
Europa Clipper is scheduled to launch on October 10, and is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2030. There, it will conduct scientific studies to determine Europa’s potential habitability as it makes multiple flybys of the moon.
The total cost of the Europa Clipper mission is estimated at around $5 billion, making it one of the more expensive planetary science missions. This budget covers the development, launch, and operations of the spacecraft over the planned mission duration.