WASHINGTON - As it soared past Mars in March, NASA’s Europa Clipper conducted a critical radar test that had been impossible to accomplish on Earth. Now that mission scientists have studied the full stream of data, they can declare success: The radar performed just as expected, bouncing and receiving signals off the region around Mars’ equator without a hitch, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) reports. Continue reading original article.
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6 August 2025 - In March 2025, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft conducted its first in‑flight validation of the ice‑penetrating radar instrument known as REASON (Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near‑surface) during a gravity‑assist flyby of Mars. The radar was activated for approximately 40 minutes as the spacecraft descended from an altitude of about 3,100 miles to 550 miles, directing very‑high‑frequency radar waves toward the Martian surface. The test yielded around 60 GB of raw data and produced a radargram spanning roughly 900 kilometers of equatorial terrain.
REASON features dual‑frequency channels—approximately 9 MHz and 60 MHz—and includes two pairs of deployable antennas mounted along Europa Clipper’s large solar arrays, which extend about 17.6 to 17.7 meters from tip to tip. These antennas transmit and receive HF and VHF signals designed to penetrate Europa’s ice shell and resolve subsurface features such as internal layering, water pockets, and the potential ocean interface, down to depths of up to 30 kilometers.
“We got everything out of the flyby that we dreamed,” said Don Blankenship, principal investigator of the radar instrument, of the University of Texas at Austin. “The goal was to determine the radar’s readiness for the Europa mission, and it worked. Every part of the instrument proved itself to do exactly what we intended.”
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Jamie Whitney, Senior Editor
Military + Aerospace Electronics
