NASA’s Europa Clipper on its way to explore a watery Jupiter moon

NASA’s Europa Clipper lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Monday atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a historic mission to its namesake Europa, one of Jupiter’s many satellites and a moon with an enormous subsurface ocean that scientists believe may have conditions to support life.
NASA says the Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft ever built for a mission headed to another planet and is also the first NASA mission dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth. The spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles on a trajectory that will leverage the power of gravity assists, slingshotting around Mars in four months and then back to Earth for another gravity assist flyby in 2026. The Clipper is scheduled to execute its first orbit around Jupiter in April 2030 and fly past Europa 49 times on its mission. Europa is one of over 90 known moons that orbit the solar system’s fifth and largest planet from the sun.
“Congratulations to our Europa Clipper team for beginning the first journey to an ocean world beyond Earth,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement. “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.”
Evidence gathered in the 1990s by NASA’s Galileo mission showed strong evidence that under Europa’s ice lies an enormous, salty ocean with more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. NASA reports scientists have also found evidence that Europa may host organic compounds and energy sources under its surface. NASA says the main goal of the mission is to determine whether Europa has conditions that could support life.
More than 4,000 people have contributed to the $5.2 billion Europa Clipper mission since it was formally approved in 2015.
Europa Clipper is tasked with three main science objectives that include determining the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its interactions with the ocean below, investigating its composition and characterizing Europa’s geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of satellites will, according to NASA, help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
“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,” Jordan Evans, project manager with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. “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?’”
Multiple entities are involved with the Europa Clipper mission. The main spacecraft body was designed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in collaboration with NASA JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as well as NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.