Europa Clipper Launch + People & Teams Supporting NASA's Mission

Europa Clipper Launch + People & Teams Supporting NASA's Mission

Europa Clipper scientists and engineers of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL)

Europa Clipper teams at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Launch team at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC)

NASA Social visitors at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

Europa Clipper team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

"At JPL, we’ve got our lucky peanuts ready for Europa Clipper!" 🥜It is a longstanding tradition at JPL to have peanuts on hand during a launch. Read the backstory here: http://go.nasa.gov/3VcqmSn

NASA's Europa Clipper Mission was successfully launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A at 12:06 p.m. EDT on Monday, October 14, 2024.

About a thousand people have recently worked on the NASA's Europa Clipper mission, including more than 220 scientists from both the U.S. and Europe. Since the mission was officially approved in 2015, more than 4,000 people have contributed to Europa Clipper.

Learn more about the Europa Clipper Team:

https://europa.nasa.gov/mission/the-team/overview/

Beyond Earth, Jupiter’s moon Europa is considered one of the solar system’s most promising potentially habitable environments. After an approximately 1.8-billion-mile journey, Europa Clipper will enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030, where the spacecraft will conduct a detailed survey of Europa to determine whether the icy world could have conditions suitable for life. Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission. It carries a suite of nine instruments along with a gravity experiment that will investigate an ocean beneath Europa’s surface, which scientists believe contains twice as much liquid water as Earth’s oceans.

Europa Clipper's science instruments include 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.

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

'Dreaming of Europa' Posters and Wallpaper (phone and desktop)

Full-size downloads: https://go.nasa.gov/3ZIDxgu

Image Credits: NASA/JPL/KSC

Release Date: Oct. 14, 2024

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