I am stealing wholesale an email I received today, about a project that is fascinating, and that incorporates a beautiful poem. Here's the intro (modestly adjusted by me):
As part of her stint as US poet laureate, Ada Limón wrote “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. She debuted the poem on June 1, 2023, to kick off the NASA “Message in a Bottle” campaign, which invited people around the world to sign their names to the poem. The poem has been engraved on the Clipper, along with participants' names that were etched onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft. Together, the poem and names will travel 1.8 billion miles on Europa Clipper’s voyage to the Jupiter system.
One point eight billion miles, people! It will take until 2030. Which right there is pretty unbelievable: 1.8 billion miles in five and a half years. Crazy.
The Clipper is scheduled to launch tomorrow, October 10, at 12:31 p.m., on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida (assuming Hurricane Milton doesn't interfere). Beyond Earth, Jupiter's moon Europa is considered one of the solar system's most promising potentially habitable environments.
Here is the poem. It moves me to tears, truly. I've included a bit more on the science of the mission at the end of this post. (And you can hear Ada read her poem here.)
In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa
by Ada Limón
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.
What will Europa Clipper do?
Europa Clipper’s main science goal is to determine whether there are places below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa that could support life. [Ed.: Jupiter has 95 or more moons, by the way, three of which—Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto—are icy. In April 2023 the European Space Agency launched its own spacecraft, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, to study these three, especially the latter two.]
The mission’s three main science objectives are to understand the nature of the ice shell and the ocean beneath it, along with the moon’s composition and geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will perform dozens of close flybys of Jupiter’s moon Europa, gathering detailed measurements to investigate the moon. The spacecraft, in orbit around Jupiter, will make nearly 50 flybys of Europa at closest-approach altitudes as low as 16 miles (25 km) above the surface, soaring over a different location during each flyby to scan nearly the entire moon.
Designed for Jupiter’s tough radiation environment
Because Europa is bathed in radiation trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field, Europa Clipper's payload and other electronics will be enclosed in a thick-walled vault. This strategy of armoring up to go to Jupiter with a radiation vault was developed and successfully used for the first time by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The vault walls—made of titanium and aluminum—will act as a radiation shield against most of the high-energy atomic particles, dramatically slowing down degradation of the spacecraft's electronics.
Life beyond Earth
Europa shows strong evidence for an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust. Beyond Earth, Europa is considered one of the most promising places where we might find currently habitable environments in our solar system. Europa Clipper will determine whether there are places below Europa’s surface that could support life.
The spacecraft's payload will include cameras and spectrometers to produce high-resolution images and composition maps of Europa's surface and thin atmosphere, an ice-penetrating radar to search for subsurface water, and a magnetometer and gravity measurements to unlock clues about its ocean and deep interior. The spacecraft will also carry a thermal instrument to pinpoint locations of warmer ice and perhaps recent eruptions of water, and instruments to measure the composition of tiny particles in the moon's thin atmosphere and surrounding space environment.
P.S. The spacecraft launched only a few days late, on October 14. Farewell and safe travels!
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