- 1European Space Agency, Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain (ines.belgacem@esa.int)
- 2Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
- 3University of Texas at Austin Institute for Geophysics, Austin, TX, USA
- 4Physics and Astronomy Department, Wheaton College, Norton, MA, USA.
- 5Physics and Astronomy Department, Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts.
- 6Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
- 7Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
- 8Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA
The NASA Europa Clipper mission will explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa via multiple flybys in the early 2030s (Pappalardo et al., 2024). The ocean world Europa is one of the most promising locations to search for life elsewhere in the Solar System and thus, Europa Clipper’s main goal is to characterize Europa’s habitability (Vance et al., 2024).
In the future, a follow-on landed mission may possibly explore Europa from its surface (Phillips et al., in revision). Based on current technology, terrain relative navigation (TRN) would be used to safely navigate to a landing site. Here we show that 12 of the 49 currently designed Europa Clipper flybys contain at least one portion where the fundamental requirements for TRN are fulfilled:
- daytime illumination with incidence angle ~30° to 60°;
- and 0.5 to 1 meter pixel scales, which for acquisition by the EIS instrument means that the altitude is 50–100 km.
We use the term ‘reconable’ to refer to these 12 flybys. Using data from the Galileo mission, we study what is currently known about these reconable areas, and rank them based on scientific criteria. Three of the reconable flybys have exceptional scientific interest, and therefore receive the highest rank 1*, where * denotes a reconable flyby. Rank 1* flybys are E5, E19 and E22. The remaining nine reconable flybys are a lower rank of 2*, where * also denotes a reconable flyby.
We also identify and rank supporting flybys, which are not reconable in themselves but provide supporting data that can be used to further characterize the reconable areas. Rank 2 supporting flybys provide particularly insightful and/or necessary contextual data. Rank 3 are default supporting flybys. The current rankings reflect our present-day knowledge, and are highly likely to change with Europa Clipper’s in-depth study of the moon’s geological, geochemical and geophysical characteristics.
Our work demonstrates the process that can be used by the Europa Clipper team to assess reconable areas. We conclude that there are areas on Europa with particular scientific interest that Europa Clipper will be able to fully characterize for potential future in-situ exploration.
How to cite: Belgacem, I., Scully, J. E. C., Parekh, R. A., Phillips, C. B., Grima, C., Collins, G. C., Craft, K., Detelich, C., Leonard, E., Mishra, I., Patterson, W., Prockter, L. M., Sutton, S. S., Stickle, A. M., and Wyrick, D. Y.: Reconnaissance of potential landing sites by Europa Clipper, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-18691, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18691, 2025.
