NASA’s Europa Clipper Spacecraft: Pre-launch Processing | Kennedy Space Center
Technicians inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida monitor movement and guide the agency’s largest planetary mission spacecraft, Europa Clipper, as a crane hoists it on a stand as part of prelaunch processing on Tuesday, May 28, 2024. Slated to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket later this year from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy, Europa Clipper will help determine if conditions exist below the surface Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, Europa that could support life.
The spacecraft was designed to withstand the pummeling of radiation from Jupiter and gather the measurements needed to investigate Europa’s surface, interior, and space environment.
Europa Clipper has nine dedicated science instruments, including cameras, spectrometers, a magnetometer, and an ice-penetrating radar. These instruments will study Europa’s icy shell, the ocean beneath, and the composition of the gases in the moon’s atmosphere and surface geology, and provide insights into the moon’s potential habitability. The spacecraft also will carry a thermal instrument to pinpoint locations of warmer ice and any possible eruptions of water vapor. Strong evidence shows the ocean beneath Europa’s crust is twice the volume of all the Earth’s oceans combined.
The Europa Clipper mission demonstrates NASA’s commitment to exploring our solar system and searching for habitability beyond Earth. The data will contribute to our understanding of the Jovian system and will help pave the way for potential future missions to study Europa and other potentially habitable worlds.
Europa Clipper is expected to reach the Jupiter system in April 2030, and it will accomplish a few milestones along the way, including a Mars flyby in February 2025 that will help propel the spacecraft toward Jupiter’s moon through a Mars-Earth gravity assist trajectory.
“After two years of painstaking work on the spacecraft here at JPL, with the help of our partners, it was bittersweet to see the spacecraft encased in its shipping container and on its way to Florida,” said Jordan Evans, Europa Clipper project manager at JPL. “But we already have Europa Clipper engineers and technicians at Kennedy who are welcoming this precious cargo and are set to accomplish the final assembly and testing so that we’re ready for launch.”
NASA and SpaceX are targeting launch aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy later this year. The launch period opens on Oct. 10. After testing and final preparations are complete, the spacecraft will be encapsulated in a protective payload fairing and moved to the SpaceX hangar at the launch complex.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The main spacecraft body was designed by APL in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, manages the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
For more information on the mission, visit: https://europa.nasa.gov/
Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Capture Date: May 28, 2024
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