Europa Clipper en route and all systems go

UPDATE, November 26, 2024. Six weeks after its October 14 launch, NASA’s Europa Clipper is already 13 million miles (20 million km) from Earth. It’s traveling at 22 miles per second (35 kilometers per second) relative to the sun, and will soon gain more speed when it completes a gravity assist around Mars in March 2025.

Deployment and testing of Clipper’s instruments is underway and going smoothly. Clipper deployed its basketball court-sized solar arrays shortly after launch. And it followed this by uncoiling the 28-foot-long (8.5-meter-long) boom that holds the craft’s magnetometer. This instrument will measure Europa’s magnetic field, which should confirm the presence of an ocean beneath the moon’s crust and tell scientists how deep and salty it is.

Most recently, Clipper deployed several antennas for its radar instrument, which it will use to study the thickness and structure of Europa’s icy crust, among other tasks. These antennas and the magnetometer boom will remain deployed for the next decade, at attention through Clipper’s journey to Jupiter and the mission itself. The remaining seven instruments on the spacecraft will be powered on and off over the next two months so engineers can check they’re in working order.

Space X Falcon Heavy Europa Clipper launched today at 12:06pm from Kennedy Space Center pad 39A carrying a dedicated mission to study Jupiter's moon Europa. Remote pad camera for @earthskyscience #falconheavy #EuropaClipper #launch pic.twitter.com/u2eMgsKd1z

— Greg Diesel Walck (@GregDieselPhoto) October 14, 2024

Meet Europa Clipper

Europa Clipper is NASA’s mission to explore one of Jupiter’s four large Galilean satellites. The moon Europa has an icy outer crust that covers an ocean world. It holds twice as much water as Earth’s oceans. So, scientists want to know more about the habitability – the ability for some form of live to exist – on this large moon.

To get Europa Clipper from Earth to Jupiter in about 5 1/2 years, the trajectory has to take advantage of flybys in the solar system. Therefore, the mission had to launch between October 10 and November 5, 2024, due to planetary alignments. The first date, October 10, became a no-go after Hurricane Milton appeared on the scene, threatening Florida.

But Europa Clipper launched successfully from Kennedy Space Center on October 14, and is now cruising on its 6-year, 1.8 billion-mile (2.9 billion km) journey to Jupiter, where it will arrive in April 2030.

Europa Clipper is NASA’s largest planetary exploration spacecraft yet. The solar sails are 100 feet (30 meters) tall. And at launch, the spacecraft weighed as much as an African elephant.

Watch a video about Europa Clipper.

What will the mission do?

Europa Clipper carries nine instruments. Some of the instruments will look down at the moon and record what it observes, while others will sample the environment the spacecraft passes through. The space around Europa is bathed with intense radiation from Jupiter. But this region may also have plumes of water erupting from under the moon’s icy crust.

To protect the spacecraft, Europa Clipper will be orbiting Jupiter and not the moon itself. The spacecraft will only dip into Europa’s environment during close flybys. The spacecraft will make 49 flybys, one every two to three weeks of its mission. Europa Clipper will get as close as 16 miles (25 km) from the moon’s surface.

NASA said:

The mission’s three main science objectives are to understand the nature of the ice shell and the ocean beneath it, along with the moon’s composition and geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.

Could Europa be habitable?

Could life exist in the oceans of Europa under the layers of ice? That’s what scientists want to know. Plus, how is there liquid water under ice in such a cold place? James O’Donoghue of the University of Reading wrote for The Conversation:

The water in Europa’s ocean is kept liquid due to frictional heating. This heating occurs because Europa becomes stretched and then relaxed as it interacts with Jupiter’s gravity on its orbital path around the giant planet. For Europa’s ocean to be habitable, a steady supply of ingredients is needed to allow some form of chemosynthesis to take place.

If these ingredients exist, they could come from hydrothermal vents on Europa’s rocky seafloor, like those on Earth, or from material seeping down through the icy crust, the ‘sea ceiling’ if you like. We do not yet know if these mechanisms are plausible, so we need more data from many different angles.

There is growing evidence that plumes of material are escaping from Europa’s surface into space. If this material is from the ocean, measuring its composition would give us insights into the habitability of that ocean.

Read more: What does “habitable” mean to astronomers?

Bottom line: Europa Clipper is on its way to explore the icy ocean moon of Jupiter. Deployment and testing of its instruments is underway and going smoothly.

Read more: A message to Europa from the people of Earth