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Preparing NASA's Europa Clipper's Plasma Instrument

Europa Clipper’s plasma instrument was tested in this calibration chamber at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Published: September 8, 2021

In this photo, the Plasma Instrument Calibration Chamber at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, recreates the plasma environments that Europa Clipper’s Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) instrument and other instruments will encounter in space. The equipment in this lab simulates these environments with ion beams that reproduce plasma energy ranges found at Jupiter and Europa.

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