Europa Clipper Mission: Road from System Integration Review to Launch

Jupiter's icy moon Europa is a prime target in our exploration of potentially habitable worlds beyond Earth. The combination of a subsurface liquid water layer in contact with a rocky seafloor may yield an ocean rich in the elements and energy needed for the emergence of life, and for potentially sustaining life through time. Europa may hold the clues to one of NASA's longstanding quests - to determine whether or not we are alone in the universe. The Europa Clipper mission will characterize Europa's habitability as the first step in the search for potential life at the Jovian moon by conducting approximately four dozen flybys. While the Clipper project is entering into the heart of its testing and validation program, some critical updates have been in work to ensure mission success. This paper will summarize changes to the mission plan and science measurement requirements from the mission's System Integration Review (SIR) baseline. It will outline the Verification and Validation (V&V) approach and how key technical challenges like power management in the presence of extreme changes in temperature and illumination, and science robustness in the presence of spacecraft and instrument faults and cyber-security are being addressed. Since SIR, Europa Clipper's Propulsion Module has arrived at JPL along with the Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS), Europa Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS), Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS). Europa Imaging System (EIS) Wide Angle Camera (WAC), Surface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) and boxes from the GNC, Avionics, Propulsion, Power and Thermal subsystems. Some science requirements have been relaxed while the mission plan has been updated to improve robustness and increase the number of data collection opportunities per flyby. Gaining confidence that such a large, complex spacecraft will operate as intended in the extreme temperature and radiation environments is accomplished through a combination of piecewise system level testing, and modeling where testing is not possible. Solar array power management in the presence of extreme temperature variation, from the inner solar system to seeing first light after the cold soaks of up to nine-hour Jupiter eclipses, has been improved to address the dynamic current-voltage (IV) curve behavior. Probabilistic risk assessments are regularly used to understand how changes in science observation schedule, science measurement requirements, and expected frequency of interruptions due to radiation and other causes affect robustness of the mission as a whole to achieve its intended science. In the cyber-security realm, increasing threats and vulnerability concerns have necessitated higher levels of protective actions by sponsoring agencies and projects. The Clipper project has implemented new cybersecurity requirements from NASA and other government agencies to protect project assets, and has been actively engaged with institutional efforts to standardize the set of responses and controls which projects will utilize in the future.