NASA’s Europa Clipper Spacecraft Launches to Jupiter’s Icy Moon

Europa Clipper lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. EDT on October 14, 2024 to begin a six-year journey to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which the spacecraft will fly by 49 times, coming as close as 25 km (16 miles) from the surface as it searches for ingredients of life.

Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission.

With its massive solar arrays extended, the probe could span a basketball court (30.5 m, or 100 feet, tip to tip).

“Congratulations to our Europa Clipper team for beginning the first journey to an ocean world beyond Earth,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“NASA leads the world in exploration and discovery, and the Europa Clipper mission is no different.”

“By exploring the unknown, Europa Clipper will help us better understand whether there is the potential for life not just within our Solar System, but among the billions of moons and planets beyond our Sun.”

“We could not be more excited for the incredible and unprecedented science NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will deliver in the generations to come,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator at Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters.

“Everything in NASA science is interconnected, and Europa Clipper’s scientific discoveries will build upon the legacy that our other missions exploring Jupiter — including Juno, Galileo, and Voyager — created in our search for habitable worlds beyond our home planet.”

“We’re ecstatic to send Europa Clipper on its way to explore a potentially habitable ocean world, thanks to our colleagues and partners who’ve worked so hard to get us to this day,” said Dr. Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Europa Clipper will undoubtedly deliver mind-blowing science. While always bittersweet to send something we’ve labored over for years off on its long journey, we know this remarkable team and spacecraft will expand our knowledge of our Solar System and inspire future exploration.”

“As Europa Clipper embarks on its journey, I’ll be thinking about the countless hours of dedication, innovation, and teamwork that made this moment possible,” said Europa Clipper project manager Jordan Evans, also from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“This launch isn’t just the next chapter in our exploration of the Solar System; it’s a leap toward uncovering the mysteries of another ocean world, driven by our shared curiosity and continued search to answer the question, Are we alone?”

The journey to Jupiter is a long one — 2.9 billion km (1.8 billion miles) — and rather than taking a straight path there, Europa Clipper will loop around Mars and then Earth, gaining speed as it swings past.

The spacecraft will begin orbiting Jupiter in April 2030, and in 2031 it will start making those 49 science-focused flybys of Europa while looping around the gas giant.

The orbit is designed to maximize the science Europa Clipper can conduct and minimize exposure to Jupiter’s notoriously intense radiation.

Mission scientists will be able to ‘see’ how thick the icy shell of Europa is and gain a deeper understanding of the vast ocean beneath.

They’ll inventory material on the surface that might have come up from below, search for the fingerprints of organic compounds that form life’s building blocks, and sample any gases ejected from the moon for evidence of habitability.

They will analyze the results, probing beneath the moon’s frozen shell for signs of a water world capable of supporting life.

“It’s important to us to paint a picture of what that alien ocean is like — the kind of chemistry or even biochemistry that could be happening there,” said Europa Clipper team member Dr. Morgan Cable, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Central to that work is hunting for the types of salts, ices, and organic material that make up the key ingredients of a habitable world.

That’s where an imager called MISE (Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa) comes in.

Operating in the infrared, the spacecraft’s MISE divides reflected light into various wavelengths to identify the corresponding atoms and molecules.

The mission will also try to locate potential hot spots near Europa’s surface, where plumes could bring deep ocean material closer to the surface, using an instrument called E-THEMIS (Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System), which also operates in the infrared.

Capturing sharply detailed pictures of Europa’s surface with both a narrow and a wide-image camera is the task of the EIS (Europa Imaging System).

“The EIS imagers will give us incredibly high-resolution images to understand how Europa’s surface evolved and is continuing to change,” Dr. Cable said.

NASA’s Cassini mission spotted a giant plume of water vapor erupting from multiple jets near the south pole of Saturn’s ice-covered moon Enceladus.

Europa may also emit misty plumes of water, pulled from its ocean or reservoirs in its shell.

Europa Clipper’s instrument called Europa-UVS (Europa Ultraviolet Spectrograph) will search for plumes and can study any material that might be venting into space.

Whether or not Europa has plumes, the spacecraft carries two instruments to analyze the small amount of gas and dust particles ejected from the moon’s surface by impacts with micrometeorites and high-energy particles: MASPEX (MAss SPectrometer for Planetary EXploration/Europa) and SUDA (SUrface Dust Analyzer).

These instruments will capture the tiny pieces of material ejected from the surface, turning them into charged particles to reveal their composition.

“The spacecraft will study gas and grains coming off Europa by sticking out its tongue and tasting those grains, breathing in those gases,” Dr. Cable said.

The mission will look at Europa’s external and internal structure in various ways, too, because both have far-reaching implications for the moon’s habitability.

To gain insights into the ice shell’s thickness and the ocean’s existence, along with its depth and salinity, the mission will measure the moon’s induced magnetic field with the ECM (Europa Clipper Magnetometer) and combine that data with measurements of electrical currents from charged particles flowing around Europa — data provided by PIMS (Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding).

In addition, the mission scientists will look for details on everything from the presence of the ocean to the structure and topography of the ice using REASON (Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding to Near-surface), which will peer up to 29 km (18 miles) into the shell — itself a potentially habitable environment.

Measuring the changes that Europa’s gravity causes in radio signals should help nail down ice thickness and ocean depth.

“Non-icy materials on the surface could get moved into deep interior pockets of briny water within the icy shell,” said Europa Clipper team member Dr. Steve Vance, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Some might be large enough to be considered lakes, or at least ponds.”

“Using the data gathered to inform extensive computer modeling of Europa’s interior structure also could reveal the ocean’s composition and allow estimates of its temperature profile.”

“Whatever conditions are discovered, the findings will open a new chapter in the search for life beyond Earth.”

“It’s almost certain Europa Clipper will raise as many questions or more than it answers — a whole different class than the ones we’ve been thinking of for the last 25 years.”

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This article is based on press-releases provided by NASA.