NASA’s largest-ever planetary spacecraft is due to launch next month

NASA’s largest-ever planetary spacecraft is due to launch on October 10 to study Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

Europa Clipper is approximately 5 metres tall and measures over 30.5 metres in width with its arrays fully extended. It has a dry mass of 3,241 kg without fuel.

NASA mounted giant solar panels onto Europa Clipper to capture the small amount of sunlight at Jupiter to power the spacecraft. The planet is about five times farther from the Sun than Earth.

“That’s led us to have the largest planetary spacecraft for NASA ever,” said Jordan Evans, a project manager for Europa Clipper at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Laurie Leshin, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, describes the mission as a “modern cathedral”.

“They are generational quests. We scientists have been dreaming about a mission like Europa Clipper for more than 20 years. We’ve been working to build it for 10 years”.

According to the space agency, the spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter in 2030.

“It really is a very long-term investment and quest, and I’m really proud that as humanity we choose to undertake these difficult and long-term goals, things like exploring the unknown out of Jupiter,” Leshin said.

Seeking conditions for life on icy Jupiter moon

The mission aims to improve existing understanding of the potential for life in environments beyond Earth by studying the moon’s ice shell, the ocean beneath it, and Europa’s composition and geology.

“So what we learn with Clipper and the habitability of Europa, this is going to pave the way for the future, for future missions to Europa and elsewhere in our solar system where we can search more directly for life,” said Gina DiBraccio, acting director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters.

The spacecraft will do flybys of Europa but will be in orbit around Jupiter. NASA says the spacecraft will get as close as 25km above the surface of Europa.

Each flyby will cover a different region, allowing for nearly complete mapping of the moon.

“For the primary mission, we do 49 flybys, but in the end, we end up orbiting Jupiter 80 times,” said Evans.

“These flybys cover both hemispheres of the moon and a variety of latitudes to get us near global coverage of the moon for the science instruments”.

Also travelling on board the spacecraft will be a new work by the US poet laureate Ada Limón.

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Limón was asked whether she would be interested in writing a poem that would travel on the spacecraft Europa Clipper to Europa by the US Library of Congress and NASA.

Limón then wrote “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” and dedicated it to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission as part of the agency’s “Message In a Bottle Campaign” that adds a touch of culture to this fascinating scientific mission.

For more on this story, watch the video in the media player above.

Video editor • Roselyne Min