Milan — A highly anticipated mission to investigate the potential for life on Europa, one of Jupiter’s icy moons, has been launched following a successful takeoff on a Falcon Heavy rocket on October 14.
The Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Launch Complex 39A at 12:06 p.m. Eastern time. After completing its second burn, the Europa Clipper spacecraft separated from the rocket’s upper stage just over an hour post-launch. Ground controllers quickly established contact with the spacecraft, confirming its optimal condition through telemetry data.
Europa Clipper is one of NASA’s priciest scientific endeavors to date, with a projected total lifecycle cost of $5.2 billion, which includes four years of operations planned after its arrival at Jupiter in 2030. The mission has been a priority in planetary science, gaining traction through decades-long proposals for Europa orbiters and flyby missions.
The mission aims to determine if Europa could support life, given its believed subsurface ocean beneath the icy crust. The presence of liquid water, energy from the moon’s core, and organic compounds present the essential elements that could foster life.
Although the spacecraft will not look for life directly, it will assess the moon’s conditions to see if they could support living organisms. “We emphasize that Europa Clipper is not a life-detection mission but a habitability investigation,” stated Gina DiBraccio, NASA’s acting director of planetary science, during an October 13 briefing.
Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, added, “We aim to understand whether Europa contains the key ingredients to support life in its oceans.”
The Europa Clipper is outfitted with nine specialized instruments, including cameras, spectrometers, and magnetometers, in addition to a gravity and radio science experiment. These instruments will conduct 49 flybys for comprehensive coverage of Europa’s surface and interior.
Weighing 5,700 kilograms at launch with fuel, the large spacecraft features solar arrays that extend the overall length to 30.5 meters when fully deployed. Protection from radiation due to Jupiter’s strong magnetic field is essential, and although early concerns were raised over potential degradation of transistors, NASA confirmed these components are adequately robust for the mission.
The mission faced development challenges and rising costs but found strong support from former Congressman John Culberson (R-Texas), who was a crucial advocate, securing funding that often surpassed NASA’s budget requests.
Culberson initially encouraged the launch of Europa Clipper on NASA’s Space Launch System, which would have facilitated a quicker journey to Jupiter. NASA, however, advised against this in 2020 due to “potential hardware compatibility issues,” and ultimately received congressional approval to pursue a commercial launch, awarded to SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy for $178 million.
Although the Falcon Heavy couldn’t deliver Europa Clipper directly to Jupiter, it will make a flyby of Mars in the near future, followed by an Earth flyby in late 2026, reaching its Jupiter destination in April 2030.
The scientific community remains hopeful for the discoveries to come. Cynthia Phillips, Europa Clipper project staff scientist at JPL, expressed her excitement, saying, “I’ve dreamed of returning to Europa since the Galileo era for about 25 years now. I’ve worked on this project for nearly a decade, and I eagerly await new close-up observations of Europa’s surface, though I know patience is key for another six years.”