NASA has successfully launched the Europa Clipper, the agency’s largest interplanetary spacecraft, which is now en route to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson expressed his congratulations to the Europa Clipper team, marking the beginning of the first journey to an ocean world located beyond Earth.
The spacecraft lifted off on October 14, atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch was delayed from its initial date of October 10 due to Hurricane Milton, which impacted Florida on October 9.
Upon its arrival in 2030, the Europa Clipper will investigate the moon’s concealed ocean, which lies beneath a thick layer of ice, to assess its habitability and the potential for supporting life.
Measuring about 100 feet (30 meters) wide once its solar arrays are deployed—larger than a basketball court—the orbiter stands roughly 16 feet (5 meters) tall. These extensive solar arrays are essential for gathering solar energy to power the spacecraft, which will be operating at a distance of about 470 million miles (760 million kilometers) from the sun.
The journey to Jupiter will take approximately 5.5 years, covering a distance of 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers). The spacecraft will make a close pass by Mars for a gravity assist in February 2025, followed by a slingshot maneuver around Earth in December 2025, before continuing its path to Jupiter. It is expected to reach the planet and its moons by June 2030.
Once in the vicinity, the orbiter will conduct flybys of several of Jupiter’s moons, with its first close approach to Europa scheduled for spring 2031. In total, it is planned to perform 49 flybys of Europa.
The primary mission of Europa Clipper is to explore beneath the moon’s frozen exterior in search of conditions suitable for life. It will be looking for water, organic compounds, chemical energy sources, and stable environmental conditions, as outlined by NASA.
Scientists hypothesize that Europa has a vast saltwater ocean containing more than twice the volume of Earth’s oceans, despite being only one-quarter of Earth’s size. This makes it one of the most promising places in the solar system for potential habitability. Determining the thickness of the ice shell and understanding the composition of the ice and underlying ocean are key scientific objectives of the mission.
The insights gained may provide valuable information regarding the search for life throughout the universe. Nelson emphasized that the Europa Clipper’s exploration could expand our understanding of potential life beyond our solar system and among other celestial bodies.
However, the Europa Clipper is not designed to search directly for signs of extraterrestrial life in the moon’s ocean.
The mission comes with a price tag of approximately $3.8 billion for the construction and launch, with an additional $1.2 billion allocated for operations until its main mission concludes in 2034. The spacecraft is equipped with advanced instruments, including cameras, spectrometers, and radar designed to analyze the moon’s surface and subsurface features, all protected by a specialized vault to withstand Jupiter’s extreme radiation levels.
The Europa Clipper will not attempt to land on Europa but will remain in an elliptical orbit around Jupiter to mitigate exposure to harmful radiation. At the end of its mission, it is expected to “deorbit,” which will likely involve a controlled crash into Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon.