The Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the Europa Clipper lifts off at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, October 14. Photo: NASA/Kim Shiflett
NASA’s largest ever mission spacecraft, the Europa Clipper is on its long voyage to Jupiter and it needs ‘help’ from Mars and Earth to get there.
The clipper is off to Europa, a moon of Jupiter with a sub-surface ocean that could be capable of supporting life.
The spacecraft launched about two weeks ago from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, the US space agency says.
The spacecraft will travel 2.9 billion kilometres on a trajectory that will use the power of gravity assists, first to Mars in four months then back to Earth for another gravity assist flyby in 2026.
After it begins orbiting Jupiter in April 2030, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times, according to plans.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says the mission has important ramifications.
“By exploring the unknown, Europa Clipper will help us better understand whether there is the potential for life not just within our solar system but among the billions of moons and planets beyond our Sun,” he says.
About an hour after launch, ground controllers received a signal from the spacecraft and two-way communication established with NASA’s Deep Space Network facility in Canberra.
Nicky Fox is associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. She says the promised scientific discoveries “will build upon the legacy that our other missions exploring Jupiter — including Juno, Galileo, and Voyager — created in our search for habitable worlds beyond our home planet”.
MISSION
The main goal of the mission is to determine whether Europa has conditions that could support life.
Europa is about the size of our Moon but with a different interior.
NASA’s Galileo mission in the 1990s showed strong evidence that under Europa’s ice lies an enormous, salty ocean with more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined.
Scientists also have found evidence that Europa may host organic compounds and energy sources under its surface.
In 2031, the spacecraft will conduct science-dedicated flybys of Europa. Coming as close as 25km to the surface, Europa Clipper has nine instruments and a gravity experiment, including an ice-penetrating radar, cameras, and a thermal instrument to look for areas of warmer ice and any recent eruptions of water.
To power those instruments in the faint sunlight that reaches Jupiter, Europa Clipper carries the largest solar arrays NASA has ever used for an interplanetary mission.
With arrays extended, the spacecraft spans 30.5 metres from end to end. With propellant loaded, it weighs about 5900 kilograms.
