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NASA's Europa Clipper Spacecraft Launch.
Europa Clipper will perform follow-up studies to those made by the Galileo spacecraft during its eight years (1995–2003) in Jupiter orbit, which indicated the existence of a subsurface ocean underneath Europa's ice crust. Plans to send a spacecraft to Europa were initially conceived with projects such as Europa Orbiter and Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, in which a spacecraft would be injected into orbit around Europa. However, due to the adverse effects of radiation from Jupiter's magnetosphere in Europa orbit, it was decided that it would be safer to inject a spacecraft into an elliptical orbit around Jupiter and make 44 close flybys of the moon instead. The mission began as a joint investigation between the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and was built with a scientific payload of nine instruments contributed by JPL, APL, Southwest Research Institute, University of Texas at Austin, Arizona State University and University of Colorado Boulder. Europa Clipper complements ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, launched in 2023, which will fly-by Europa twice and Callisto multiple times before moving into orbit around Ganymede.
Europa Clipper was launched on October 14, 2024, aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket in a fully expended configuration. The spacecraft will use gravity assists from Mars in February 2025 and Earth in December 2026, before arriving at Europa in April 2030.
The spacecraft is larger than any other used for previous NASA planetary missions.
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