Europa Clipper Mission Analysis: Interplanetary Trajectory Design

This paper presents the 2024 Mars-Earth Gravity Assist (MEGA) reference Interplanetary Trajectory for Europa Clipper, NASA's next flagship mission, which is planned to launch in October 2024. The MEGA interplanetary trajectory was pivotal in NASA's selection of Falcon Heavy as Clipper's launch vehicle, since it is an option that both 1) avoids the problematic thermal environment at Venus, and 2) does not require a kick-stage like the $\Delta$VEGA option. The paper explains the process used to compute several interplanetary trajectory options that lead to the MEGA design, as well as the optimization of the MEGA launch period in high fidelity model. The optimization requires custom constraints in order to include a demo maneuver and to guarantee a low probability of impact at Mars and Earth given a flight system failure. Finally the paper describes the iterative process of launch and interplanetary trajectory design, and the back-up interplanetary trajectories for launch in 2025 and 2026.