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Getting NASA’s Europa Clipper Ready for Its Mission

How did the team working on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft test whether it will work properly in outer space? A special chamber that emulates the environment it will experience when it launches in October 2024, of course. Watch this video to learn more about how the team moved the main body of the largest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission into JPL's historic thermal vacuum chamber.

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 [Music] the Europa Clipper spacecraft behind me is in a chamber that recreates outer space we're going to show you how it was put to the test before making the journey to Jupiter's icy [Music] Moon built in 1961 this 85 ft tall 25 ft wide space simulator has tested deep space missions like Voyager and the

    00:00:29 perseverance Mars Road Tony's team had to get it ready for Europa Clipper Europa Clipper spacecraft had to be transported from a different building on lab to this building this is a very very narrow facility and a very small space to get a very large spacecraft into the [Music]

    00:00:49 chamber 2 1 we've been planning this for almost a year or more to get all of the moves choreographed down to where people we're going to stand to get the spacecraft from this hallway in through this chamber it weighs 6,000 lb when the spacecraft is lifted off of its picture is fre hanging from the cranes we're going to move the spacecraft 3 ft each

    00:01:14 and the only control we have of the spacecraft is from taglines a tagline is just a rope like you would see in the Macy's day parade as they pull the floats the tagline operators are our only way of managing the spacecraft's weight as we progress it on the CR train into the chamber it's a very large team that works on this it really shows how well we've bonded together to be able to

    00:01:38 do something like this over just a few days once the door is closed there are pumps in the room that pull out all the air from this chamber that gives us the vacuum we need to replicate space the walls as you can see are all black and there are pipes running down the Walls all of those pipes will get flood with liquid nitrogen which cools the space down to about- 130°

    00:02:01 SE the chamber takes up to three to four trucks of liquid nitrogen every day to make sure this chamber stays as cold as we needed for the duration of the [Music] test Europa Clipper will be in the chamber for over 2 weeks we will go through phases of testing we will turn on our solar simulator at different levels of energy to replicate being

    00:02:25 close to the Sun further out from the Sun and to replicate being out by Jupiter three floors below us are 37 lamps that illuminate up through a beam through the wall of the chamber up to a 25 ft mirror up in the ceiling of the chamber that Cates the beam of light down back onto the spacecraft that light replicates the sun and the solar energy coming from the

    00:02:49 sun when we're on orbit once we're in environments for the test the systems team will power on the vehicle and test out different instruments to make sure they're operating correctly by the end of this test we hope that the spacecraft is ready for its journey to Jupiter and it can survive the temperatures on its way off to Jupiter and

    00:03:11 Europa I've been on this a very long time many years spent on this spacecraft so I'll be very happy very excited very sad to see it go but we we want to make sure it's successful when it gets to Jupiter and we want to make sure it can do its job correctly