Magnetic Field of the Europa Clipper Spacecraft

The Europa Clipper spacecraft and instruments include many unavoidable magnetic field sources, which must be carefully accounted for to measure Europa’s induced magnetic field precisely. The animation illustrates the complex nature of the spacecraft’s magnetic field, modeled as the sum of over 300 individual sources that built into various spacecraft subsystems and instruments. Magnetic sources include hard magnets, which are used in the valves of the propulsion system, as well as current loops that generate variable magnetic fields in the two solar array wings, each of which extends about 30 feet from the spacecraft. Magnetic field lines that originate from these sources are color-coded by the local magnetic field strength, where green colors indicate higher field strengths and blue colors indicate lower strengths. To reduce the contamination of observations of Europa’s magnetic field by fields that are generated onboard the spacecraft, the sensors of the Europa Clipper Magnetometer are mounted on the outer portion of an 8.5-m-long boom extending from the spacecraft in a direction perpendicular to the long axis of the solar array.