University of Bern involved in NASA mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
University of Bern involved in NASA mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa
Four researchers from the University of Bern are taking part in NASA's mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. The aim of the mission is to examine the icy moon for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The researchers are part of the scientific team for the mission cameras, the Europa Imaging System (EIS) and the MASPEX mass spectrometer, the University of Bern said on Friday.
The Europa Clipper space probe, which is due to reach Jupiter’s moon Europa in April 2030, has nine scientific instruments that work synchronously and collect data.
+ In space exploration, Switzerland punches above its weight
For this purpose, the probe will fly over the moon’s surface almost 50 times at an altitude of 25 kilometres, the statement said. During each flyby, Europa Clipper will hover over a different location to scan almost the entire moon.
The EIS camera system is also used here. The researchers hope to be able to use the EIS camera to determine whether there is liquid water near the surface of Europa. MASPEX will be used to investigate the chemistry of the moon’s suspected underground ocean.
The Europa Clipper is the largest space probe that NASA has ever built for a planetary mission. It started its 2.9 billion kilometre journey from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
More
Close encounters of the Swiss kind
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.