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This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft with solar arrays fully deployed in orbit around Jupiter. Europa Clipper’s solar arrays are the biggest NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission.
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission successfully lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 14, a key milestone in the agency’s long-running effort to verify a potentially habitable environment beyond the Earth for the first time.
The large, solar-powered spacecraft bound for Jupiter and its moon Europa lifted off from Launch Complex 39A aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at 12:06 p.m. EDT, the opening of a 15-sec. launch window, under mostly clear skies.
Following stage separation, Clipper was inserted into a parking orbit by the second stage within 8 min. of liftoff, followed by a 3 min. 7 sec. departure burn and the 12,800-lb. Clipper’s smooth separation from the second stage at just under 63 min. into flight. Then came a “handshake” signal acquisition over NASA’s global Deep Space Network.
The $5.2 billion mission, whose development began in 2015 and is intended to continue its prime mission into June 2034, is to reach and enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. With refinement, the orbital trajectory is to support 49 close flybys of the ice-covered Europa beginning in the spring of 2031. In order to acquire the propulsion for the circuitous, 1.8-million-mi. journey to Jupiter, Clipper is counting on close flyby gravitational assists from Mars in February 2025 and the Earth in December 2026.
Larger than a basketball court with its solar arrays deployed, Clipper has nine science instruments, including four imagers, an ice-penetrating radar and a gravity experiment for astrobiology research activities supported by more than 220 scientists. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory led spacecraft development, with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center providing overall management.
The 1,940-mi.-dia. Europa features an estimated 15-mi.-thick ice shell, an expansive saltwater ocean and rocky mantle beneath, as well as potential subsurface thermal vents. The ocean’s chemistry could include organics, the chemical building blocks for life.
“It will bring us one step closer to answering fundamental questions about our Solar System and our place in it,” Sandra Connelly, the deputy associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, said of the Clipper mission during an Oct. 13 prelaunch news briefing. “Sending a mission into space is hard and this mission is no exception.”
Challenges included developing a spacecraft able to withstand Jupiter’s harsh radiation environment and possibly fly through the plumes of water vapor vented by Europa’s icy surface.
Then there was a prelaunch check of the Falcon Heavy’s second-stage propulsion, following a difficulty with similar hardware experienced by the Falcon 9 rocket second stage that launched NASA’s Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station on Sept. 28. Additionally, plans to launch at the opening of the Oct. 10-Nov. 6 window were delayed by the approach of the massive Hurricane Milton and the many tornadoes it spawned, which required ground crews to ensure Clipper was provided with adequate prelaunch sheltering and remained uncontaminated.
“This mission is really the perfect example of exploring the unknown in space,” Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, told the prelaunch news briefing.
While NASA missions have been scientifically and robotically exploring Mars for decades looking for evidence of past life, the red planet has long been cold, dry and desert-like with a thin atmosphere. Mars very long ago appears to have possessed a warmer environment with a richer atmosphere that supported water as a liquid on the surface and possibly biological activity.
On Earth where there is water, there is life
“Clipper is the first NASA spacecraft dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth,” Free said. “Jupiter’s moon Europa is considered one of the most promising habitable environments in the Solar System. While we are not going to search for other life, Europa could have all the ingredients for life as we know it—water, organics, chemical energy and stability. What we find will have profound implications for the study of astrobiology and how we view our place in the universe.”
In addition to its science instrumentation, Clipper also is equipped with a vault plate upon which “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” handwritten by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limon, is engraved. Also, 2.6 million names submitted by the public have been electronically etched on a microchip that is traveling alongside.
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