Europa Clipper: 10 Things To Know About The NASA Mission Flying To Jupiter’s Icy Moon

[Elderberry]

abp Live 10/6/2024

NASA's Europa Clipper mission, launching on October 2024, will orbit Jupiter and conduct 49 close flybys of Europa, an icy moon with a subsurface ocean potentially harbouring life.

Europa Mission: NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is set to unlock the mysteries of one of Jupiter’s most intriguing moons, Europa. The launch window for the mission is opening on October 10, 2024, and the spacecraft will undertake the journey to determine whether the icy moon of the largest plant in our solar system holds the potential to support life.

Here are 10 key things to know about this "groundbreaking" space mission, around which a lot of excitement is building to know as it could make one of the most profound discoveries in space exploration: the potential for life on another world.
1. Europa Matters, Because... 

Europa is considered to be one of the most promising places to find habitable conditions beyond Earth. According to NASA, scientific evidence suggests that the essential ingredients for life — water, the right chemistry, and energy — may exist beneath its icy shell.
2. Europa Clipper Will Study The Ocean Beneath The Ice 

Previous NASA missions have provided evidence of an enormous salty ocean beneath Europa’s frozen surface. This ocean could be twice as large as all of Earth’s oceans combined, making Europa a prime target in the search for life beyond our planet.

More: https://news.abplive.com/science/what-is-europa-clipper-10-things-to-know-about-nasa-mission-flying-to-jupiter-icy-moon-1722361

[Elderberry]

Eric Berger
@SciGuySpace

The Europa Clipper launch, currently set for October 10, will almost certainly be delayed due to Tropical Storm Milton. Unfortunately this has the potential to be a historic hurricane for the west coast of Florida.

[Elderberry]

SpaceX to launch Europa Clipper on Falcon Heavy for mission to Jupiter - TWIRL #184

Neowin by  Paul Hill · Oct 5, 2024

We have several launches coming up This Week in Rocket Launches, but the most interesting one by far is SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launching the Europa Clipper spacecraft on its long journey to Jupiter. The spacecraft will use Earth and Mars for gravity assists before arriving at Jupiter in 2030.

•   Who: SpaceX
•   What: Falcon 9
•   When: 14:52 UTC
•   Where: Florida, US
•   Why:

 SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 to launch the European Space Agency's Hera mission to asteroid 65803 Didymos to observe the aftermath of NASA's DART mission on Dimorphos, the other asteroid in the binary system. The Hera mission will demonstrate several new technologies, such as autonomous navigation around the asteroid. Two CubeSats will join the mission as secondary payloads called Milani and Juventas. Juventas will perform a radar probe of the asteroid, while Milani will perform a multispectral mineral survey on the asteroid's makeup.

More: https://www.neowin.net/news/spacex-to-launch-europa-clipper-on-falcon-heavy-for-mission-to-jupiter---twirl-184/