NASA Europa Mission Delayed Due to Radiation Damage Concerns

The mission of the $5 billion spacecraft Europa Clipper might be postponed for quite a while as NASA investigates the reliability of the spacecraft’s transistors. 

The spacecraft, as it is now, may not be able to accomplish its scientific goal of determining whether life exists on Europa due to the malfunctioning technology. The capacity of the electrical switches, or transistors, which are fundamental to electronic devices and computer chips, to withstand the intense radiation from the Jovian system is the crux of the matter. Every spacecraft needs radiation shielding since radiation from sources like solar flares and cosmic rays is everywhere in space. Europa is located in the Jovian radiation belt, a dangerous area of space where radiation levels can be fifty times higher than on Earth.

Two forms of radiation doses are of concern to spacecraft engineers: the cumulative total ionizing dose and the transient flux dose. Shielding vulnerable areas, constructing “radiation vaults” to store critical technology, or employing radiation-hardened components like the chips that are currently causing alarm are all ways spacecraft architects might lessen the impact of this. The crucial radiation-resistant chips were found to have failed when tested at radiation levels “significantly lower” than what was intended, as engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory learned from a non-NASA client on May 3.

The German semiconductor company Infineon Technologies presently makes the chips used by Europa Clipper. Additionally, military spacecraft utilize them. Interactions with Jupiter’s radiation have been a challenge for all spacecraft that have visited the planet. The spacecraft will fly around Jupiter at various angles and distances from the moon, sometimes as near as fifteen miles, in order to reduce exposure.

Leadership at NASA may need to reevaluate the project’s strategy or alter the launch date if engineers cannot verify that the spacecraft could survive the mission in its current configuration. Scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory would still have plenty of time to figure out how to save the mission’s scientific data, most likely by taking other routes that would avoid the most dangerous radiation in the area.

If there are enough copies of the chips, engineers may take a few months to a year to replace them. If there is a shortage of these processors, engineers may have to get alternatives from other suppliers, which would force them to reevaluate the spaceship from the ground up.