NASA's Europa Clipper demonstrates radar on Mars

NASA's Europa Clipper mission, launched in October last year by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket has executed a flyby of Mars on the way to the Jupiter system. A radar instrument meant to probe the kilometres thick ice shell and the global subsurface ocean on Europa, has been successfully tested at Mars. The radar performed nominally, bouncing and receiving signals from the equatorial region of Mars. The instrument is called the Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON), 

The REASON instrument will help scientists determine the processes that transport of material from the ocean to the surface and vice-versa. This exchange has implications for the habitability of the ice moon. The radar antennas are mounted on the solar arrays that span an incredible 17.6 metres, to capture as much light as possible at Jupiter, which only receives 1/25th of the sunlight that reaches the Earth. Prior to the testing at Mars, the radar was thoroughly tested on the ground, including with test engineering models. 

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Interplanetary spacecraft have to calibrate the payloads on board. The Earth and the Moon are frequent targets, but any flybys of planets such as Venus or Mars also offer opportunities. During the Mars flyby, the team calibrated the infrared camera as well as the radar instrument on Europa Clipper. While the radar instrument operated from an altitude of 884 km during the Mars flyby, at Europa, the spacecraft will approach as close as 25 km to the surface. The radar instrument was operated for only 10 minutes, but captured over six gigabytes of data, which is still being relayed back and will be closely analysed in the months ahead.