SwRI Gathers First Ultraviolet Data from NASA's Europa Clipper Mission

SwRI Gathers First Ultraviolet Data from NASA's Europa Clipper Mission
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 19, 2025

The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) aboard NASA's Europa Clipper, developed by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), has completed its initial commissioning phase following the spacecraft's October 14, 2024, launch. The mission aims to reach the Jovian system by 2030, where it will conduct numerous close flybys of the icy moon Europa, believed to harbor a subsurface ocean that could potentially support life.

Europa-UVS is one of nine scientific instruments aboard the Europa Clipper, including another SwRI-led instrument, the MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration (MASPEX). The UVS gathers ultraviolet light to analyze the composition of Europa's atmospheric gases and surface materials.

"SwRI scientists started this process in January from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, however, we had to evacuate due to the fires in southern California," said SwRI Institute Scientist Dr. Kurt Retherford, principal investigator (PI) of Europa-UVS. "We had to wait until May to open the instrument's aperture door and collect UV light from space for the first time. We observed a part of the sky, verifying that the instrument is performing well."

SwRI has a history of providing ultraviolet spectrographs for numerous spacecraft, including ESA's Rosetta comet orbiter, NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Juno mission to Jupiter.

"Europa-UVS is the sixth in this series, and it benefits greatly from the design experience gained by our team from the Juno-UVS instrument, launched in 2011, as it pertains to operating in Jupiter's harsh radiation environment," said Matthew Freeman, project manager for Europa-UVS and director of SwRI's Space Instrumentation Department. "Each successive instrument we build is more capable than its predecessor."

Weighing just over 40 pounds (19 kg) and drawing only 7.9 watts of power, UVS is smaller than a microwave oven but capable of measuring the relative concentrations of various elements and molecules in Europa's atmosphere. A similar UVS instrument aboard ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, launched in 2023, is currently studying Jupiter's icy moons and gases from the volcanic moon Io. Having two UVS instruments in the Jupiter system simultaneously offers significant scientific benefits.

In addition to atmospheric studies, Europa-UVS will also search for potential plumes erupting from Europa's subsurface.

"Europa-UVS will hunt down potential plumes spouting from Europa's icy surface and study them to understand what they tell us about the nature of subsurface water reservoirs," said Dr. Thomas Greathouse, SwRI staff scientist and Europa-UVS co-deputy PI. "The instrument is working fabulously, and we're excited about its ability to make new discoveries once we get to Jupiter."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) manages the Europa Clipper mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. The mission is a collaborative effort with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.