A crowd gathered at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to witness the launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft on Monday, Oct. 14, 2024.
“Launch went perfectly, and Europa Clipper is on its way to Jupiter,” said Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Roger Clark, a co-investigator on the Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa, or MISE, instrument onboard the spacecraft. “We had to get there early to get seats.”
The spacecraft began its five-and-a-half-year journey to the orbit of Jupiter where it will investigate the nearby moon Europa. The mission aims to understand the nature of Europa’s ice shell and the ocean beneath it, as well as Europa’s composition and geology. Science team members also hope to learn something about the potential for life on other worlds.
“Watching the giant Falcon Heavy rocket rise skyward on three bright pillars of flame, enveloped in silence for about 20 seconds – the time it took for the sound to reach us at Banana Creek – felt surreal, as if defying the laws of physics,” said PSI Senior Scientist Oleg Abramov, a co-investigators on the Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System, which will map temperature and texture of Europa’s surface. “It seemed to sail away like a majestic clipper ship, a fitting image for the Europa Clipper mission.”
At least seven PSI scientists will lend their expertise to four instrument teams during the mission, including MISE; the Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System, or E-THEMIS; the Europa-Ultraviolet Spectrograph, or Europa-UVS; and the Europa Imaging System, or EIS.
The spacecraft is scheduled to reach Jupiter in April 2030.