Jupiter’s moon Europa is finally getting its first human-built visitor in 2030.
Meet Europa Clipper.
NASA launched the Europa Clipper mission, the largest spacecraft ever to visit another planet and conduct extraplanetary research, in October 2024.
This artist illustration shows the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which is being developed for launch in October 2024, approaching Jupiter's moon Europa.
Why? There’s scientific evidence that the ingredients for life may exist on Europa right now.
How long will it take to get there, though? The spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion km) to reach Jupiter in April 2030. It will orbit Jupiter, and conduct 49 close flybys of Europa.
Development on the spacecraft has been in progress over the past few years, so that upon arrival, NASA can further investigate Europa’s subsurface ocean, Jupiter’s magnetic field, and study its potential habitability.
Unfortunately, because Europa is squarely within Jupiter’s extreme radiation field, it’s difficult to design the satellite to withstand prolonged exposure to such harsh conditions.
In further consideration of this extreme environment, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed the spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and conduct 44 flybys of the moon to conduct its most critical scientific experiments, rather than land on the surface of the moon.
But even still, at low altitudes, the spacecraft would be able to “clip” the surface plumes of the moon to study what might just be hiding under the ice, giving it its awesome name!
What are you most excited about for this mission?
Takeaways and Resources 🚀
2 Takeaways
The Europa Clipper is Astrobiology Focused: Missions to Mars, Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and other similar bodies feature a heightened emphasis on astrobiology and related instrumentation. It’s part of the future of space research, where we examine both the potential for the building blocks of life (critical amino acids, and other resources) and potentially the presence of life in extraterrestrial environments.
The Extreme Radiation of Jupiter is Crazy: Jupiter’s magnetosphere is on average 20 million kilometers across, which is about 150 times wider than its parent planet and almost 15 times the diameter of the Sun. In other words, at least according to the European Space Agency, “any human astronaut that lands there would receive a lethal radiation dose on a timescale of hours” and spacecraft electronics would probably suffer the same fate, if not worse.
2 Resources
Check out this cool 3D interactive of the Europa Clipper made by NASA here: https://europa.nasa.gov/spacecraft/meet-europa-clipper/
Read about Jupiter’s radiation belts here: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Jupiter_s_radiation_belts_and_how_to_survive_them
NASA Photo of the Day 🌔
Explanation: Looping through the Jovian system in the late 1990s, the Galileo spacecraft recorded stunning views of Europa and uncovered evidence that the moon's icy surface likely hides a deep, global ocean. Galileo's Europa image data has been remastered here, with improved calibrations to produce a color image approximating what the human eye might see. Europa's long curving fractures hint at the subsurface liquid water. The tidal flexing the large moon experiences in its elliptical orbit around Jupiter supplies the energy to keep the ocean liquid. But more tantalizing is the possibility that even in the absence of sunlight that process could also supply the energy to support life, making Europa one of the best places to look for life beyond Earth. The Juno spacecraft currently in Jovian orbit has also made repeated flybys of the water world, returning images along with data exploring Europa's habitability. This October will see the launch of the NASA's Europa Clipper on a voyage of exploration. The spacecraft will make nearly 50 flybys, approaching to within 25 kilometers of Europa's icy surface.
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
Daily Opportunity Drop 🌌
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