NASA's Jupiter moon mission becomes acronymathon NASA has announced the nine instruments selected for its planned 2020s mission to Jovian moon Europa, and as is the local custom, there are some choice stretching-it-a-bit acronyms on offer for aficionados of the agency's previous efforts. Those previous efforts include the memorable "MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, …
I guess the delta-V to get it into Europa orbit from Jupiter orbit is too large to be practical. Also the proximity of Jupiter would probably make Europa orbits quite unstable too. A GMAT simulation would be cool, but so far I've only used that for Earth orbit sims (trying to understand a SpaceX GTO launch).
Glad it's not just me wondering why they aren't parking it Europa orbit. Pity. They could obviously do a lot more science from there than on a measly 16 flybys.
Since it's not planned to last indefinitely I wonder if some kind of budget constraint meant they didn't send it with enough fuel and thrusters to do a proper job.
"Wouldn't the destabilizing factors be Io and Ganymede, not Jupiter?"
Although Io & Ganymede (and Callisto) will have some small effect, the major influence on orbit stability is the enormous mass ratio between Jupiter & Europa. The Lagrange points L1 & L2 are very close to Europa and even orbits inside those can be unstable unless you are deep down in Europa's gravity well.
Here is a relevant delta-v chart: http://i.imgur.com/AAGJvD1.png
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