Among the ICY moons of the outer solar system, europa provides an opportunity to answer some of the highest priority questions identified in the planetary science decadal survey, namely: beyond earth,…

This federal contract award to The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) supports the development of the Europa Lander Stereo Spectral Imaging Experiment (ELSSIE) instrument. ELSSIE will serve as the "eyes" of the Europa Lander mission, providing high-resolution panoramic and workspace imaging as well as spectroscopic analysis capabilities to support the mission's search for biosignatures and characterization of Europa's surface and subsurface ocean. The $2,247,862.18 grant is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and will mature the ELSSIE instrument design, demonstrate compatibility with planetary protection protocols, and prototype key components such as the camera optics, focus mechanism, and data processing. This work will advance ELSSIE to Technology Readiness Level 6, readying it for integration onto the Europa Lander spacecraft. The contract has no set-aside designation and runs through September 26, 2023.

Among the ICY moons of the outer solar system, europa provides an opportunity to answer some of the highest priority questions identified in the planetary science decadal survey, namely: beyond earth, are there contemporary habitats elsewhere in the solar system? Do organisms live there now? Europas subsurface ocean is many times larger than earth s, sustained by tidal heating from jupiter (e.g., kivelson ET AL., 2000). Decades of research have hypothesized that chemistry of the ocean and sustained hydrothermal reactions at its floor could sustain extant life (e.g., zolotov and shock, 2001; priscu and hand, 2012). Europa lander (EL) will test this hypothesis. In support of EL s search for biosignatures on europa, determining habitability of europa s ocean, and understanding physical properties of the surface and its communication with the ocean, we propose development of the europa lander stereo spectral imaging experiment (elssie). Elssie would be the eyes of EL, providing panoramic and workspace views at high resolution, supporting sampling, and, crucially, going beyond minimum payload imaging capabilities to composition capability so as to identify and map enrichments in organics and non-ICE phases and determine which ICE is least radiation-damaged to select the best samples. Elssie represents the next generation of imagers for planetary missions, raising the standard for capability. Its unique design melds a high-resolution, 20-filter multispectral stereo imager based on imager for mars pathfinder (IMP) with a point spectrometer, sharing a single radiation-shielded teledyne H2RG hgcdte focal plane array (FPA), providing stereo and imaging/spectroscopy measurements of reflected light from visible to shortwave-infrared (swir) wavelengths (0.34-3.65 m) to search for organics, identify salts and possible biominerals, characterize crystalline VS. Amorphous ICE and ICE grain sizes, and map their distributions. These capabilities address EL s highest priority questions: the search for life and determination of habitability of europas ocean. In our proposed work, we will: (a) mature and light-weight the instrument design, (b) demonstrate compatibility of the FPA with planetary protection protocols, (c) demonstrate attenuation of radiation at the FPA by a vault, (d) prototype camera optics and demonstrate their survival and performance at cryotemperature, (e) prototype the adjustable focus mechanism and show operation at cryo-temperatures, (f) prototype the spectrometer and demonstrate operation at ambient conditions, and (g) demonstrate that onboard processing to produce reduced-volume downlink products is robust against radiation noise. This work plan results in a design fully compatible with EL resources, and matures to TRL-6 those instrument subsystems except the spectrometer that reside within elssie s sensor, mounted on EL s HGA antenna. Remaining work to mature the system to TRL-6 includes qualification of a prototype spectrometer mechanical assembly under vibration and cryogenic operation, and prototyping of part of the data processing unit in EL s radiation vault. The additional work could be accomplished by early 2022 in one additional year beyond icee-2.