NASA leans toward launching Europa Clipper as scheduled, despite transistor issue
Though the final decision will be made in early September, NASA revealed today in a short post that management is leaning towards launching the multi-billion Europa Clipper mission as scheduled on October 10, 2024, despite a very recently discovered transistor issue where the transistors were not properly hardened in construction for the harsh radiation environment surrounding Jupiter.
The next major milestone for Clipper is Key Decision Point E on Monday, Sept. 9, in which the agency will decide whether the project is ready to proceed to launch and mission operations. NASA will provide more information at a mission overview and media briefing targeted for that same week.
The Europa Clipper mission team recently conducted extensive testing and analysis of transistors that help control the flow of electricity on the spacecraft. Analysis of the results suggests the transistors can support the baseline mission. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted sentence suggests NASA officials have weighed the option between launching on time with a limited ability to do science once at Jupiter versus delaying the launch years to fix the transistors, and are now favoring the former option. The cost of delay would be high and long, and NASA officials might believe the bad press for that option would be much greater than a mission that only achieves its bare minimum results. For example, to admit publicly that NASA installed transistors that were not space-hardened when that necessity has been known about since the 1960s would be as embarrassing to the agency as it was for Boeing when it discovered it had installed flammable tape in its Starliner capsule. NASA management might be leaning to letting a flawed multi-billion dollar project launch, knowing its capabilities are quite limited, in order to avoid that embarrassment.
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Though the final decision will be made in early September, NASA revealed today in a short post that management is leaning towards launching the multi-billion Europa Clipper mission as scheduled on October 10, 2024, despite a very recently discovered transistor issue where the transistors were not properly hardened in construction for the harsh radiation environment surrounding Jupiter.
The next major milestone for Clipper is Key Decision Point E on Monday, Sept. 9, in which the agency will decide whether the project is ready to proceed to launch and mission operations. NASA will provide more information at a mission overview and media briefing targeted for that same week.
The Europa Clipper mission team recently conducted extensive testing and analysis of transistors that help control the flow of electricity on the spacecraft. Analysis of the results suggests the transistors can support the baseline mission. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted sentence suggests NASA officials have weighed the option between launching on time with a limited ability to do science once at Jupiter versus delaying the launch years to fix the transistors, and are now favoring the former option. The cost of delay would be high and long, and NASA officials might believe the bad press for that option would be much greater than a mission that only achieves its bare minimum results. For example, to admit publicly that NASA installed transistors that were not space-hardened when that necessity has been known about since the 1960s would be as embarrassing to the agency as it was for Boeing when it discovered it had installed flammable tape in its Starliner capsule. NASA management might be leaning to letting a flawed multi-billion dollar project launch, knowing its capabilities are quite limited, in order to avoid that embarrassment.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
PERFECT!!
Proceed with a mission that underachieves, and be able to plead with Congress that it needs to fund a NEW mission to launch several years down the road that will provide whatever was missed by the first mission.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to waste government money, but being one seems to be a good way to do so.
1. There’s still a lot we just don’t know about exactly what happened with the MOSFETs. But based on what has been stated, I think the hardest questions have to be posed to the German chip supplier, Infineon. They were contracted to deliver chips sufficiently radiation hardened to meet JPL’s specs. They failed to inform JPL when another customer discovered that some of their Infineon MOSFETs were failing to meet specs. JPL only discovered the potential danger by accident.
It is serious enough that JPL and all other NASA centers may wish to reconsider even purchasing any future chips from Infineon.
Obviously some kind of review of JPL and NASA procedures in how they contract these components, and to what degree they do their own testing on them, may well be in order, too.
2. It is frustrating, as Eric Berger noted today on X, how much less transparent the science mission directorate has become since Tom Zurbuchen stepped.
Meanwhile, I guess we are left to hope that JPL has successfully determined that Europa Clipper’s chips are up to the challenge. There is a lot riding on this mission.
”Obviously some kind of review of JPL and NASA procedures in how they contract these components…”
I find it hard to believe that a Notice of Escape wasn’t contractually required once Infineon even suspected its MOSFETs failed to meet spec. Failure to submit one in such a high-profile way is almost certainly going to have serious consequences quite possibly including disbarment from all future U. S. government contracts. At least it would have back in the pre-Biden days.
Richard M,
This seems just one more in a seemingly endless string of NASA failures to reasonably manage its projects/contractors/suppliers. As the how-to of effective project management continues to stubbornly elude the NASA lifer-class, perhaps NASA should, in future, arrange for that to be done in the same way it now contracts for hardware and other services. Both SpaceX and Rocket Lab have the chops to quickly and leanly manage such complex projects and I can foresee other potential candidates emerging over the next few years too.
But, for now, I think a decision to go ahead with the Europa Clipper launch is most likely the correct one. The exact situation of the suspect Infineon MOSFETs is not known. Perhaps they will fail in service. But they might not. And, as with Galileo’s balky high-gain antenna, a compromised science return is a lot better than no science return.
In any case, it will be a number of years before this mission’s main science work can commence as it will take that long to get to its destination. In the interim, work can proceed on a next-phase probe that could include a lander and rover and perhaps even a drill and mini-submersible. The maturation of Starship technology will also make sending a much larger probe complex to Europa possible in a way it is not at present.
I think there is less riding on this mission than there has been on many of NASA’s past deep space probes. Europa will still be there as we incrementally master the technology needed to make major deep space probes more capable, more numerous and less expensive.
“Analysis of the results suggests the transistors can support the baseline mission.”
Robert’s highlighted words suggests that NASA thinks the parts will work long enough for the announced length of the mission but may not last for an extended mission. Thus, NASA may be able to achieve its goals, but this may be a mission that does not exceed the goals by much. NASA still can declare success, and it would be right to do so. However, it is always efficient for missions to be extended, collecting more data than we had paid for.