REASON: An Ice Penetrating Radar for NASA’s Europa Clipper

This artist's concept depicts NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter.

REASON — Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface — is an ice penetrating radar carried by NASA’s flagship Europa Clipper spacecraft on its mission to explore icy ocean habitats on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Developed by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) at the Jackson School of Geosciences, REASON is one of nine instruments aboard Europa Clipper, but it’s the only one that can look directly into Europa’s icy shell. The ice penetrating radar technology behind REASON was developed by UTIG researchers to study Antarctica’s ice sheet. The research stories below chart REASON’s journey from conception and development, to Earth-bound calibration, validation and journey to the final frontier.

 


 

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