NASA's Europa Clipper Mission: Behind the Spacecraft | JPL

NASA's Europa Clipper Mission: Behind the Spacecraft | JPL

Meet engineers contributing to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. They will study Jupiter’s icy moon Europa to see if it has conditions suitable to support life. Europa Clipper is set to launch in October 2024 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will arrive at Jupiter in 2030. The mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California with key spacecraft infrastructure contributions from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

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.

Download Europa Clipper Ocean World poster:

https://europa.nasa.gov/resources/173/europa-clipper-journey-to-an-ocean-world-poster/

For more information on this mission, visit: https://europa.nasa.gov/

Video Credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Duration: 2 minutes

Release Date: Sept. 6, 2024

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