Four engineers wearing white full-body coveralls, gloves, and masks, handle a flat metal structure a few inches thick, to which are attached two telescopes a foot or more long, while a fifth worker in identical attire stands to the side, holding hand-held controls for the crane that’s lofting the hardware.
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Published: May 24, 2022

Engineers handle Europa Clipper’s star trackers and nadir deck in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. With red covers to protect their optics, the star trackers’ telescopes stick out diagonally like the eyes of a frog or insect. Star trackers will tell Europa Clipper’s computers how the spacecraft is oriented in space, which is essential for both performing science observations and for understanding data from science instruments.

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