NASA is on the cusp of sending a spacecraft on a 1.8-billion-mile journey to study Europa, a moon of Jupiter, which may harbor the conditions for life.
Its Europa Clipper spacecraft — delayed because of Hurricane Milton — will launch on Monday, Oct. 14, atop a SpaceX rocket to begin a 1.8-billion-mile journey to the Jovian System to study Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
It’s the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission.
Here’s everything you need to know about the mission, when it launches and how to stream it live online.
When Europa Clipper Will Launch
NASA is targeting a launch at 12:06 p.m. EDT (9:06 a.m. PDT and 16:06 UTC) on Monday, Oct. 14, for the launch of Europa Clipper. It will blast off atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
You can attend the launch remotely if you register for NASA’s virtual guest program, which includes notifications about changes to launch times.
When And Where To Livestream Europa Clipper Launch
Live coverage will begin at 11:o0 a.m. on NASA+ and NASA’s website in English and on NASA+, NASA’s website and NASA’s Spanish YouTube channel. You can get exact details here prior to the launch.
If you want to watch preparations for the launch, the NASA Kennedy newsroom YouTube channel will provide a live video feed of Launch Complex 39A about 18 hours before liftoff.
Why Is NASA Launching A Mission To Europa?
Astrobiologists consider Europa to host a potentially habitable environment. Europa’s critical environment is its oceans. Europa has an ocean beanth its icy surface that may contain twice as much water as Earth’s oceans. That’s despite Europa being about the same size as Earth’s moon.
“Europa, we think, has all the ingredients for life as we know it,” said Cynthia Phillips, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in a public talk for NASA on Sept. 21. That’s water plus the chemical elements for life — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus. “These elements are common in the solar system and our models show that it’s likely that they’re abundant on Europa as well.” Crucially, Europa’s ocean floor is thought to contain hydrothermal events, meaning there’s hot water — energy — to drive chemical reactions and possibly sustain life. “Another potential energy source is the surface,” said Phillips. “Europa orbits Jupiter within its really strong magnetic field, and so the surface is fried by radiation, which can create interesting oxidants and organics when it impacts the surface of Europa.” If they can get into its ocean, they could spark chemical reactions and sustain life.
Europa also has time on its side. “We think that this ocean has been there on Europa over the age of the solar system — four billion years,” said Phillips. “If life was ever going to form on Europa, it’s had plenty of time to get going.”
Although it’s been photographed before by various missions — including NASA’s Galileo and Juno spacecraft — these have been but brief flybys. Europa Clipper will go into orbit and make a detailed survey.
What Will The Europa Clipper Mission Do?
The first part of the mission is long-term space travel. Upon launch, the solar-powered Europa Clipper will begin a 1.8-billion-mile journey that will take it to the Jovian System. It’s scheduled to enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. Once in situ, Europa Clipper will use nine scientific instruments to examine Europa in an effort to determine whether it could have conditions suitable for life.
Key among its science objectives is a gravity experiment investigating Europa’s ocean.
What Europa Clipper won’t do is land on the icy moon; that will be left to a future mission, depending on what Europa Clipper reveals.
Oceans Worlds In The Solar System
“When we think of an ocean world, we usually think of a world like the Earth … but there’s a different kind of ocean world in our very own solar system, and these are ocean worlds, like Jupiter’s moon, Europa,” said Phillips. “We have found multiple worlds like Europa not — just in our solar system — that an ice layer at the surface and then an ocean beneath it.”
Ganymede and Callisto, also at Jupiter, are thought to have oceans below their icy surfaces. They will be studied by the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission, which is already en route to the Jovian System. The moons Titan, Enceladus and Mimas at Saturn are also though to contain underground oceans, as are Arial, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon around Uranus and Triton at Neptune.
The dwarf planets Pluto, Charon and Ceres could also have subsurface oceans below a surface ice layer.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
