The countdown to NASA’s Jupiter mission is on. This JPL engineer is helping it happen

Consider meticulously handcrafted objects and sure issues come instantly to thoughts: wonderful artwork, unique vehicles, luxurious timepieces.

However Pasadena native Steve Barajas spends his days constructing a bespoke merchandise that is on one other degree completely: NASA’s Europa Clipper.

The 13,000-pound behemoth, with a solar-array wingspan the size of a basketball court docket, is likely one of the company’s most bold efforts. It is on an October countdown to launch to Jupiter and its moon Europa, atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, to seek out out if life exists within the deep ocean believed to lie beneath Europa’s icy exterior.

The central physique of the $5-billion Europa Clipper arrived in June 2022 on the Pasadena campus of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the painstaking ultimate meeting of elements shipped from throughout the U.S. and Europe. That is the place Barajas is available in.

Barajas, 35, is a mechanical engineer main a crew that, in coordination with different JPL specialists, installs essential {hardware} for the bold mission. Barajas describes some excessive factors with a parental aptitude: There’s the magnetometer that might verify whether or not an ocean exists beneath the Europa ice; the mass spectrometer that can analyze gases in Europa’s environment; the infrared cameras that can map the moon’s floor composition, temperature and roughness; and the solar panels that can assist energy the spacecraft devices.

The challenge’s momentum to liftoff did not spare the Europa Clipper crew when JPL in early February laid off 530 folks, or about 8% of its workforce, due to uncertainties over congressional funding for NASA. Though the job cuts, the second spherical this 12 months, have been felt “throughout the NASA household,” NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson stated, “the Europa Clipper mission will proceed as deliberate.”

In his official NASA bio, the UC Berkeley graduate remembers his childhood fascination with space. “As a child, I keep in mind passing the signal alongside the 210 Freeway that learn ‘NASA-JPL Subsequent Exit,’ pondering it was so cool that NASA was so shut.”

Barajas, who joined JPL in 2016 from Aerojet Rocketdyne, stated his work has taught him the artwork of delayed gratification. If the Europa Clipper launches on schedule from the Kennedy Area Middle, Barajas should wait 5½ years for it to reach at Europa, about 488 million miles from Earth, the place it should carry out dozens of flybys of the moon to gather knowledge.

“I am engaged on a spacecraft that can hopefully discover one thing profound sooner or later, and dealing with individuals who share the identical ardour,” he stated.

When JPL finishes the buildout, Barajas will probably be a part of the crew that flies to Florida in Might for launch preparations, with liftoff scheduled for as early as Oct. 10 from Kennedy Area Middle in Cape Canaveral.

The Occasions spent a day with Barajas on the job late final 12 months. The interview was edited for size and readability.

5 a.m.

Barajas begins his day learning a pile of exercise experiences from the earlier day’s work to create a tactical schedule for the mechanical engineers on his crew.

In the present day is a giant day for the Europa Clipper crew. They’re going to be testing the craft’s thermal pumping system, the final main addition to the spacecraft’s vault, a thick-walled aluminum alloy field that holds the spacecraft’s “mind”: its electronics and computer systems.

“The thermal pump is the guts of the spacecraft,” pumping fluid via tubing to regulate the craft’s temperature, Barajas stated. The daylong effort is hazardous due to the excessive stress used to check the system with helium, a nonflammable gasoline.

7 a.m.

The Europa Clipper’s tall silvery core stands in JPL’s Area Meeting Facility in Excessive Bay 1 clear room, surrounded by momentary scaffolding. In a close-by convention room, Barajas represents the mechanical engineering crew as he compares notes for the day forward with colleagues from {the electrical} engineering and programs groups.

“A few of what we’re discussing are small particulars. It normally is not an enormous revamp of the plan,” Barajas stated. “It is attempting to get all the pieces organized in order that we will present very clear course once we meet with the remainder of the groups at 7:30.”

9 a.m.

Earlier than any work on the spacecraft begins, Barajas and his colleagues need to don the white protecting coveralls generally known as bunny fits. Barajas should repeat the process 3 times earlier than the day ends.

Collegial chatter abounds as a result of some folks coming into the clear room for the primary time need assistance with the method.

“Each time we enter the clear room, now we have to first placed on the bunny go well with, which is a really ugly one-piece jumper,” Barajas stated. “Empty your pockets; no telephones or watches. Shoe covers go in your ft, then there are boots that go on high of these. When you have a beard; there is a masks to put on for that. Then there is a face masks and a hood that is like a material helmet goes over that. Then you definately placed on the bunny go well with with out letting it contact the bottom. Then there’s tape on the entire separate elements, becoming a member of the legs to the footwear, gloves to the sleeves, and so forth.”

The method should be repeated after a employee leaves the clear room for lunch or a rest room break—”It is one of many day by day downsides of the job”—so veterans know, “you are not in a position to hydrate as you’d usually.”

Subsequent, there’s something that appears like a bathe stall, buts it is dry air being blasted on the occupant, onerous sufficient to really feel like a wind storm.

On one wall of the clear room cling plaques commemorating missions that date again 63 years, to the Ranger 1 moon mission, when engineers labored on spacecraft in road garments. However this isn’t 1961, a time when earthlings weren’t involved about spreading their organic junk off planet.

“Planetary safety has developed,” Barajas stated of the strict work necessities he has to comply with each day. “Nobody needs to be the particular person accountable when extra-terrestrial life is lastly discovered and it seems to be one thing we introduced there from earth.”

9:30 a.m.

Contained in the clear room, engineers and technicians are ensuring the entire fittings on the thermal pump are sufficiently tight.

There is no such thing as a chatter, no small discuss. Everyone seems to be trying intently on the work being achieved, a degree of scrutiny that continues in the course of the testing course of. Barajas is there to make sure that members of the thermal crew conducting the check have all the pieces they want and the work goes easily.

“Now we have detectors right here on the clear room flooring that can learn whether or not something is seeping out. We do that with helium,” Barajas stated. It needs to be beneath a sure charge loss. “There’ll at all times be some seepage however so long as it isn’t an excessive amount of, we’re OK.”

10:30 a.m.

There are two thresholds for achievement. One is a vacuum check utilizing a wand spraying helium to see if it it’s being sucked into the system. The opposite is the high-pressure check through which helium is pumped via the system to see if gasoline leaks out.

Any vital leaks will interrupt the tight choreography of the spacecraft’s meeting and testing schedule, lower than a 12 months away from launch time.

“We’re bodily placing the spacecraft collectively. We’re the top of the road,” Barajas stated, attempting to elucidate the intense environment within the room. “It is as much as us to confirm that the elements now we have been despatched are working the way in which they need to. People aren’t infallible. We’re at all times trying over one another’s shoulder to ensure we’re doing the job proper.”

“I feel that is the place the stress comes from, proper? That we really feel the stress and the burden of constructing this car that has been the life’s work of some and years of labor for a lot of others.”

1 p.m.

It is lunchtime. You would possibly suppose that the stress of tight deadlines would trigger Barajas and others on the challenge to push via to remain on schedule. Dangerous thought, Barajas stated.

“We at all times find time for lunch,” he stated. “What we do not need is to have hungry folks on the ground. Typically we cycle folks out and in in order that the work can proceed. Different instances we simply take a 45-minute break, so the parents can keep targeted on the ground once we are having a protracted day like this.”

2 p.m.

Barajas steps out of the clear room to meet up with cellphone calls and e mail.

“In my specific position, the brunt of the day is numerous behind-the-scenes work,” Barajas stated. “To maintain issues shifting, waiting for the following job.”

There’s the occasional startling interruption of tour guides talking within the corridor outdoors his workplace as they lead teams via JPL’s Spacecraft Meeting Facility. The primary attraction is the window into the clear room, the place excursions can see the spacecraft itself.

“There is a fixed stream of excursions in the course of the day. It is like working in a fishbowl,” Barajas laughs.

3 p.m.

The work day involves the three p.m. change of shift. However Barajas is not knocking off; he is again to the clean room as testing continues. Barajas must ensure that the second shift is ready to decide up the place the primary shift left off.

4 p.m.

The exams are achieved and the groups decide that there have been no leaks. However there is not even the briefest of celebrations for this achievement.

“We have a lot nonetheless to do. Interim steps do not actually get a lot of a response from us,” Barajas stated.

Barajas and colleagues flip their focus to the following few days, when they are going to fill the system with freon after which shut the spacecraft’s aluminum vault for good.

“That will probably be a milestone, not only for us, however for the entire challenge,” he stated.

Which may even get a high-five.

2024 Los Angeles Occasions.

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