Hurricane Milton delays launch of NASA's largest spacecraft, Europa Clipper, to October 14
NASA is very close to launching its highly awaited Europa Clipper mission, following its rescheduling due to Hurricane Milton. The mission will explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The launch is now set for October 14, 2024, at 12:06 p.m. EDT, using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The primary aim of this mission is to study Europa’s potential to support life, investigating whether the ocean beneath its thick ice shell could possibly harbor conditions for habitability.
The Europa Clipper is NASA’s largest spacecraft specifically designed for planetary missions. It will travel a whopping 1.8 billion miles over six years, reaching Jupiter in April 2030. Once in orbit, the spacecraft will conduct 49 flybys of Europa, using its suite of nine advanced instruments to gather data on the moon’s icy surface, subsurface ocean, and possible signs of organic material.
Key instruments like MISE (Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa) will analyze salts, ices, and organic compounds, while E-THEMIS (Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System) will look for hot spots near the surface, where plumes of ocean material could emerge - which will be one step in a plethora of steps to find out whether Europa could support life.
NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch briefings and the launch itself on NASA+, starting on October 13. The launch will also be available in Spanish.
Through this mission, we could uncover critical data about Europa’s environment, particularly its vast subsurface ocean, which scientists believe contains twice the volume of Earth’s oceans. This ocean, hidden beneath an ice layer that could be up to 15 miles thick, will also be closely studied for potential hydrothermal activity - which is very similar to that found in Earth’s deep-sea vents. This won't just enable us to understand the moon’s potential to harbor life better, but it will also provide a framework for future missions, including possible landers or probes to directly sample Europa’s ocean.
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