Europa Clipper is a probe that will launch to the Jupiter system.

The spacecraft is NASA’s outer planets flagship mission — the agency’s Starship Enterprise — and it will study the habitability of Europa, an ice-covered ocean moon. If the clouds of cruel Venus have the potential for life, the saltwater seas of Europa promise to be a veritable aquatic Eden.

To determine whether creatures can exist there, Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter multiple times, scanning Europa in slices at each encounter, building over time a global map of the frozen moon.

The spacecraft’s instruments will reveal beneath Europa’s ice shell a liquid ocean with three times the amount of saltwater found here on Earth.

If there is complex life anywhere else in the solar system, it is there, in that water. Which means JPL, APL, and a handful of NASA centers across the country are building a spacecraft that will address questions that directly affect philosophy, religion, and humankind’s place in the universe.

What NASA finds at Europa might literally change everything, and Europa Clipper is central to this effort.  (Courtesy of David Brown for Supercluster)

Europa Clipper is NASA’s largest planetary mission spacecraft.

With its massive solar arrays and radar antennas, Europa Clipper will be the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission. The spacecraft needs large solar arrays to collect enough light for its power needs as it operates in the Jupiter system, which is more than five times as far from the Sun as Earth. The spacecraft will be about 16 feet (5 meters) in height.

With its arrays deployed, the spacecraft spans more than 100 feet (30.5 meters) and has a dry mass (no propellant in the tanks) of 7,145 pounds (3,241 kg).

Because Europa is bathed in radiation trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field, Europa Clipper's payload and other electronics will be enclosed in a thick-walled vault. This strategy of armoring up to go to Jupiter with a radiation vault was developed and successfully used for the first time by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

The vault walls – made of titanium and aluminum – will act as a radiation shield against most of the high-energy atomic particles, dramatically slowing down degradation of the spacecraft's electronics.

Instruments

Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS): Europa’s ionosphere, and plasma trapped in Jupiter’s magnetic field, distort magnetic fields near Europa. PIMS Faraday cups will distinguish those distortions from Europa’s induced magnetic field, which carries information about Europa’s ocean.

Europa Clipper Magnetometer (ECM): The magnetometer investigation aims to confirm that Europa’s ocean exists, measure its depth and salinity, and measure the moon’s ice shell thickness. It will also study Europa’s ionized atmosphere and how it interacts with Jupiter’s ionized atmosphere.

Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE): The mission’s infrared spectrometer will map the distribution of ices, salts, organics, and the warmest hotspots on Europa. The maps will help scientists understand the moon’s geologic history and determine if Europa’s suspected ocean is suitable for life.

Europa Imaging System (EIS): A wide-angle camera and a narrow-angle camera, each with an eight-megapixel sensor, will produce high-resolution color and stereoscopic images of Europa. They will study geologic activity, measure surface elevations, and provide context for other instruments.

Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding Ocean to Near-surface (REASON): Ice-penetrating radar will probe Europa’s icy shell for the moon’s suspected ocean and study the ice’s structure and thickness. It will also study the moon’s surface elevations, composition, and roughness, and search the moon’s atmosphere for plumes.

Europa THermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS): The thermal imager uses infrared light to distinguish warmer regions on Europa where warm liquid water may be near the surface or might have erupted onto the surface. It will also measure surface texture to understand the small-scale properties of the surface.

MAss SPectrometer for Planetary EXploration/Europa (MASPEX): The mass spectrometer will analyze gases in Europa’s faint atmosphere and possible plumes. It will study the chemistry of the moon’s suspected subsurface ocean, how ocean and surface exchange material, and how radiation alters compounds on the moon’s surface.

Europa Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS): By collecting ultraviolet light with a telescope, and creating images, the mission’s ultraviolet spectrograph will help determine the composition of Europa’s atmospheric gases and surface materials. It will also search near Europa for signs of plume activity.

SUrface Dust Mass Analyzer (SUDA): Tiny meteorites eject bits of Europa’s surface into space, and a subsurface ocean or reservoirs might vent material into space as plumes. The dust analyzer will identify that material’s chemistry and area of origin, and offer clues to Europa’s ocean salinity.

Image Credit: NASA / Instrument data and captions courtesy of NASA

Falcon Heavy is designed and manufactured by SpaceX in Hawthorne, California. It is derived from the Falcon 9 vehicle and consists of a strengthened Falcon 9 first stage as a central core with two additional first stages as strap-on boosters.

Stats

Total launches: 11

Total landings: 19

Total reflights: 15

Specs

Height: 70m / 229.6ft

Width: 12.2m / 39.9ft

Mass: 1,420,788kg / 3,125,735lb

Payload to LEO: 63,800 kg / 140,660 lb

Payload to GEO: 26,700 kg / 58,860 lb

Payload to Mars: 16,800 kg / 37,040 lb

Lineage

SpaceX conducted Falcon Heavy's first launch on February 6th, 2018, at 3:45 PM EST. The rocket carried a Tesla Roadster belonging to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, with a dummy dubbed "Starman" in the driver's seat.

The second Falcon Heavy launch occurred on April 11th, 2019. This launch successfully launched the Arabsat-6A satellite and all three booster rockets successfully returned to Earth except but the center core subsequently fell over and was lost during transport due to heavy seas.

The third Falcon Heavy launch successfully occurred on June 25th, 2019. This mission successfully launched multiple payloads including USAF STP-2, a space memorial for Celestis, and Lightsail-2. The mission also supported the U.S. Air Force National Security Space Launch certification process for the Falcon Heavy. The side boosters were successfully recovered but the center core failed to land and was destroyed on impact with the Atlantic Ocean.

The fourth Falcon Heavy mission, USSF-44 for the U.S. Space Force, successfully launched on November 1st, 2022 from Kennedy Space Center.

The fifth Falcon Heavy mission launched USSF-67 on January 15th, 2023.

The soxth Falcon Heavy mission launched ViaSat-3 Americas on April 30th, 2023.

The seventh Falcon Heavy mission launched EchoStar 24 (Jupiter 3) on July 28th, 2023.

The eighth Falcon Heavy mission launched Psyche on October 13th, 2023.

Photo by SpaceX/Ben Cooper

Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) is a historic launch site located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Originally constructed in the late 1960s, LC-39A was designed to support the Apollo program, including the groundbreaking Apollo 11 mission that first landed humans on the Moon in 1969. The pad also played a crucial role in launching Skylab missions and was instrumental during the Space Shuttle era, including the launch of the first Space Shuttle, Columbia, on STS-1 in 1981.

In 2014, SpaceX leased LC-39A from NASA and undertook extensive refurbishments to adapt the pad for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. These upgrades involved significant modifications to the pad's infrastructure to meet the requirements of SpaceX’s rockets. Since then, LC-39A has become a vital launch site for SpaceX, supporting a range of missions including crewed flights under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

Under SpaceX's management, LC-39A has been the site of several landmark events. It hosted the first Falcon 9 launch from the pad on March 30, 2017, and was the launch site for the historic Falcon Heavy debut on February 6, 2018, which was the most powerful rocket in operation at that time. Additionally, LC-39A was the launch site for the first crewed flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft on May 30, 2020, marking the first crewed spaceflight from U.S. soil since the end of the Shuttle program.

Today, LC-39A remains a critical asset for SpaceX, supporting both crewed and uncrewed missions. It continues to serve as a launch site for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and is expected to play a central role in future missions, including those aimed at lunar exploration and beyond. The pad's rich history and ongoing significance highlight its importance in the broader context of space exploration.

To achieve the correct orbit for the heavy payload, SpaceX will expend all three boosters of the Falcon Heavy rocket and drop them into the Atlantic Ocean.

The boosters will have their landing legs and grid fins removed to minimize weight and maximize power.

Extraterrestrial life might exist under all sorts of conditions that humans would struggle to imagine. But we know of one set of conditions in which life flourishes in a multitude of shapes and sizes: the conditions found on Earth.

Because we know Earth has the right conditions for life, humans can then sharply narrow down the search for extraterrestrial life by searching only in places that have the conditions that Earth life requires: a source of energy, the presence of certain chemical compounds, and temperatures that allow liquid water to exist. Jupiter’s icy moon Europa seems to be just such a place.

Life needs a source of energy, the presence of certain chemical compounds, and temperatures that allow liquid water to exist. Jupiter’s icy moon Europa seems to be just such a place.

Scientists describe Europa as an "ocean world" because decades of evidence from analysis of spacecraft observations strongly suggest that an ocean of liquid water is hidden beneath the moon’s surface of ice. In fact, some of Europa’s characteristics would be extremely difficult to explain if the moon does not contain a global subsurface ocean.

Europa is not the only ocean world. Two of Saturn’s moons seem to be in the same category: tiny Enceladus has a global saltwater ocean that sprays out into space as a plume of icy particles that fly hundreds of miles above its surface, and the large moon Titan is thought to have a subsurface ocean as well.

But we begin our search with a world where research has been pursued for many decades, and where the questions to ask are very well defined.

Courtesy of NASA