Smiths Interconnect supports NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa

Key connectivity components from Smiths Interconnect are used in the mission, which has the goal of identifying whether Europa can support life.

Europa, one of Jupiter’s 95 moons, was famously referenced in Arthur C. Clark’s book ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and is a major candidate to support life, due to the presence of a saltwater ocean capped by a layer of ice on its surface. In this respect it is very similar to conditions on earth – also an ocean world. Smiths Interconnect, which produces highly engineered connectivity products for use in mission critical applications such as space travel, supplied connectivity and communication components (‘isolators’) for the mission.

The isolators supplied by Smiths Interconnect serve two key purposes: Designed into a subsystem that sends telemetry data (measurements and other critical data points that will be collected on Europa’s surface) back to earth for monitoring and investigation; and forming part of the broadband data relay equipment that will be used to send images of the moon collected on the mission back down to earth.