Science Observation Planning for NASA’s Europa Clipper

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, currently in its final stages of integration and test and slated for launch in October 2024, will be the first mission to conduct a detailed exploration of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Equipped with an advanced suite of instruments to perform in situ and remote sensing science, the Europa Clipper payload will characterize Europa’s ice shell and ocean, understand its surface composition and chemistry, and explore the geology of surface features, including sites of recent or current activity.Once Europa Clipper arrives at the Jovian system, the spacecraft will enter orbit around Jupiter and begin a series of nearly 50 flybys of Europa, with a typical orbital cadence between 14 and 21 days. The science team must support both strategic and tactical operations at this pace, balancing a diverse set of science and engineering priorities, constraints, and requirements. We must also build flexibility into our systems and remain responsive to scientific discoveries, since there is much about Europa that is unknown. In this paper, we will characterize these challenges and describe our solutions, including discussions of our science planning objectives and our tactical and strategic science planning designs.To support operations, the science team must be agile and efficient, and so we have designated representative groups within the science team to participate in operations processes. These groups—the Thematic Working Groups, Focus Groups, science investigation teams, and science leadership—are each chartered with instrument-specific or cross-discipline functions. We have also designated a Tactical Science Group (TSG), which is empowered to make time-sensitive operational decisions on behalf of the science team. The TSG serves as the primary personnel interface between the science team and the mission operations team, advocating for science during tactical processes. These teams have overlapping membership, and they are integral to the strategic and tactical science planning functions.Through these groups, the science team supports three main strategic functions: trajectory analysis and evaluation, development and implementation of the Strategic Science Planning Guide (SSPG), and development support for the Reference Activity Plan (our foundational planning product). For trajectory evaluations, these groups assess the scientific merit of a trajectory, focusing on instrument-specific and cross-discipline analyses. These groups also help to develop the SSPG, which is the fundamental mechanism by which we express science priorities to the broader mission operations team. Once a prime-mission SSPG has been authored, it is used by the mission operations team to inform the Reference Activity Plan (RAP), which contains the whole-mission timeline of activities. The science team is a crucial participant as the final mission-flyable RAP is developed, providing feedback to resolve science issues and ensure that the planned activities reinforce a strong science return. This paper will also include a discussion of the software tools that will support science operations planning and collaborative science.The Europa Clipper science team highly anticipates the exploration of Europa and is eager to continue developing a high-fidelity science observation plan to learn as much as possible about this unique place in our solar system.