NASA and SpaceX will launch a multibillion-dollar mission to a moon of Jupiter to see if that world could support life.
At a briefing held on October 13, 2024, officials said they were ready to launch NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy on October 14, 2024 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch was originally scheduled for October 10, but the passage of Hurricane Milton across Florida delayed it.
At the briefing, Jordan Evans, project manager for the mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: “The Europa Clipper spacecraft is ready for its ride into space”. He also noted that final checks of the spacecraft turned up no issues with it.
The launch will send the 5,700-kilogram Europa Clipper spacecraft on a trajectory that will include a flyby of Mars in March 2025 and Earth in December 2026 before arriving at Jupiter in April 2030.
Spacecraft separation from the Falcon Heavy upper stage will take place just over an hour after liftoff. The first signals from the spacecraft should be received between five and 19 minutes after separation. The spacecraft will begin the process of deploying its large solar arrays a few hours after this. Once entering orbit around Jupiter, the spacecraft will make dozens of close approaches of Europa, an icy moon thought to have a subsurface ocean that could be habitable.
“Europa is a fascinating destination,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. “Clipper is the first NASA spacecraft dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth.”
The potential to determine if Europa is habitable has made the mission a top priority among planetary scientists. Its overall cost, including operations through a prime mission at Jupiter extending to 2034, is estimated to $5.2bn.
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