SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Is About To Launch A $5 Billion Spacecraft
Over the past few years, SpaceX has been launching both the Falcon 9 and Heavy nearly constantly and is responsible for a majority of the payload mass sent into space. While the Falcon 9’s payloads usually consist of Starlink satellites or rideshare missions, Falcon Heavy is often reserved for large single spacecraft.
These are usually either from contracts with the military or NASA experiments that have been decades in the making. Just yesterday we got the first good look at one of the heavy lift launch vehicle’s upcoming payloads, and it costs around $5 billion. Here I will go more in-depth into this mission, spacecraft progress, work toward vehicle integration, and more.
From SLS to Falcon Heavy
Yesterday NASA tweeted saying, “Here’s the big reveal of EuropaClipper! The spacecraft is out of the box and processing has started ahead of the journey to Jupiter’s moon Europa. Launch is targeted for October on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center.” In a lot of ways, this spacecraft compares to the James Webb Space Telescope in terms of cost and development time. For Europa Clipper, work started over a decade ago in 2013, and cost around $5 billion in total. If you combine the fact that the journey to Jupiter will take nearly another 5 years, you end up with an incredibly resource-intensive program.
As far as its purpose, the spacecraft will conduct a detailed survey of Europa (One of Jupiter’s Moons) and use a sophisticated suite of science instruments to investigate whether the icy moon has conditions suitable for life. Some of the key mission objectives are to produce high-resolution images of Europa’s surface, determine its composition, look for signs of recent or ongoing geological activity, measure the thickness of the moon’s icy shell, search for subsurface lakes, and determine the depth and salinity of Europa’s ocean. In total, the spacecraft will orbit Jupiter and fly by Europa 44 times during its 3.5-year mission, at altitudes ranging from 16 miles to 1,678 miles.
As far as the decision to use the Falcon Heavy to launch such an important payload, it actually wasn’t NASA’s first choice. Originally, the agency was planning to launch using the Space Launch System or SLS. In theory, this would have been great for the agency as it would provide some additional missions to the relatively new rocket and the SLS would also have been capable of getting the spacecraft to Jupiter in under four years. However, years ago in 2021, a combination of a few reasons changed the agency’s mind.
For one, the agency realized that switching to the Falcon Heavy and going with SpaceX would save them a very significant amount of money. Around that time the acting director of the White House budget office said in a statement, “At an estimated cost of over $2 billion per launch for the SLS once development is complete, the use of a commercial launch vehicle would provide over $1.5 billion in cost savings. The Administration urges Congress to provide NASA the flexibility called for by the NASA Inspector General.” In this case, he’s referring to the flexibility to use a commercial vehicle rather than SLS. Eventually, this work paid off and SpaceX was selected to launch the spacecraft at a huge discount compared to SLS. To put it in perspective, the new ride on Falcon Heavy only cost NASA $178 million. Not far off from an estimated $2 billion saved just by switching rockets.
Besides the cost, there were concerns about the readiness of the Space Launch System and whether or not they would be able to even launch in 2024. It may have been able to get the spacecraft there around 1.5 years earlier but they could easily be negated by initial delays. Related to this, the agency believed that one of SLS’s primary contractors, Boeing, would not have been able to build another SLS core stage in time for this launch window. Instead, they decided that all efforts with SLS should be focused on the Moon and returning humans to its surface.
If all that wasn’t enough, it was determined that SLS’ shaking during the launch process would not work with Europa Clipper. Specifically, SLS’s use of Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) generates more vibrations in the payload than a launcher that does not use SRBs. It was enough to force a redesign for the mission as they couldn’t risk damaging the payload. Unfortunately, the cost to redesign Europa Clipper for the SLS vibratory environment was estimated at an additional $1 billion. This means the switch to Falcon Heavy saved an estimated $3 billion in combined total for the agency.
More Falcon Heavy Missions
Even with Europa Clipper set to lift off in only a few months from now, there is a different Falcon Heavy mission scheduled before then. In fact next month on June 25th, SpaceX and NASA are set to lift off the GOES-U Satellite. In late 2021, NASA selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-U (GOES-U) mission. GOES-U will provide advanced imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth’s weather, oceans, and environment, as well as real-time mapping of total lightning activity and improved monitoring of solar activity and space weather. The total cost for NASA to launch GOES-U is approximately $152.5 million, which includes the launch service and other mission-related costs. It was originally set to launch in April but has since moved back to June. It will also mark the first Falcon Heavy flight of 2024, with the last launch happening in December of last year.
Just a couple of months after that mission it will be time for Europa Clipper. Looking at the spacecraft itself and some of the complexities makes it clear why so much time and money was needed to create it. Europa lies well within the harsh radiation fields surrounding Jupiter, because of this, even a radiation-hardened spacecraft in near orbit would be functional for just a few months. Most instruments can gather data far faster than the communications system can transmit it to Earth because there are a limited number of antennas available on Earth to receive the scientific data. Therefore, another key limiting factor on science for a Europa orbiter is the time available to return data to Earth. In contrast, the amount of time during which the instruments can make close-up observations is less important.
Studies by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory show that by performing several flybys with many months to return data, the Europa Clipper concept will enable it to conduct the most crucial measurements of the cancelled $4.3 billion Jupiter Europa Orbiter concept. In this case, between each of the flybys, the spacecraft will have seven to ten days to transmit data stored during each brief encounter. That will let the spacecraft have up to a year of time to transmit its data compared to just 30 days for an orbiter. The result will be almost three times as much data returned to Earth, while reducing exposure to radiation. The Europa Clipper will not orbit Europa, but instead orbit Jupiter and conduct tens of flybys.
Only days ago NASA crews rotated to vertical then lifted NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft from its protective shipping container after it arrived at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 28. The spacecraft, which will collect data to help scientists determine if Jupiter’s icy moon Europa could support life, arrived in a United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane at Kennedy’s Launch and Landing Facility on May 23. The hardware traveled more than 2,500 miles from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California where it was assembled. The team transported Europa Clipper to the PHSF and will perform a number of activities to prepare it for launch, including attaching the high gain antenna, affixing solar arrays to power the spacecraft, and loading propellants that will help guide the spacecraft to its destination. On board are nine science instruments to gather detailed measurements. Research suggests an ocean twice the volume of all the Earth’s oceans exists under Europa’s icy crust.
The spacecraft is expected to receive a total ionizing dose of 2.8 megarad during the mission. Shielding from Jupiter’s harsh radiation belt will be provided by a radiation vault with 0.3 inches (7.6 mm) thick aluminum alloy walls, which will enclose the spacecraft electronics. To maximize the effectiveness of this shielding, the electronics will also be nested in the core of the spacecraft for additional radiation protection. As for its journey, in 2021, it was announced that the mission would use a 5.5-year trajectory to the Jovian system, with gravity-assist maneuvers involving Mars (February 2025) and Earth (December 2026). The launch is targeted for a 21-day period between October 10 and 30, 2024, giving an arrival date in April 2030, and backup launch dates were identified in 2025 and 2026. This puts some extra pressure on Falcon Heavy however the launch vehicle has an impressive history. Over the next few months, we can expect to receive a few more updates as both the spacecraft and Falcon Heavy are prepared. Some of the final steps will include a very careful payload integration and finally a launch late this year.
Conclusion
SpaceX managed to get a significant contract for Falcon Heavy and it’s by far the most expensive payload they have ever launched. With initial development starting over a decade ago and an estimated total cost of more than $5 billion, Europa Clipper is an important payload. What was once meant to launch on SLS has since changed to SpaceX and it’s about to lift off. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.
