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NASA's Europa Clipper Begins 6-Year Journey to Search for Signs of Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon
NASA's latest planetary mission will hunt for signs of habitability on a distant ocean world.
Harry Vanderspeigle (Alan Tudyk), the titular alien in USA Network's Resident Alien, hails from a distant planet near the Mizar-Alcor star system. There, an intelligent alien species related to the earthly octopus resides and makes its plans against humanity. Historically, when people have considered where to look for life elsewhere in the universe, they have focused on worlds similar to our own. Most of the time, we imagine aliens as living on rocky planets inside their parent star’s habitable zone, but the truth might be a whole lot weirder.
On Monday October 14, NASA launched a massive interplanetary spacecraft on a 6-year journey to Jupiter. Once in the Jovian system, NASA’s Europa Clipper will perform several dozen flybys of the icy moon Europa, looking for signs of habitability. Should Europa Clipper find anything way out there in the solar system’s suburbs, it would change the way we understand and search for extraterrestrial life.
Europa Clipper, NASA’s alien hunting spacecraft, headed for Jovian moon Europa
Europa Clipper launched from atop a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 29A at Kennedy Space Center at 12:06 Eastern time October 14. It’s the largest interplanetary spacecraft NASA has ever built (the International Space Station remains the largest overall spacecraft) and the first dedicated to studying an ocean world.
The launch rocket’s first stage put Europa Clipper into orbit within a few minutes of liftoff. Next, the second stage kicked into gear and the rocket’s nose cone opened to reveal the spacecraft. About an hour later, Europa Clipper separated from the rocket and continued toward its first stop: Mars.
Getting up to speed will require a couple of gravity assists, so Europa Clipper will make a few pit stops before heading for deep space. On its present trajectory, the spacecraft will reach the orbit of Mars in February 2025. It will use the planet’s gravity to pick up speed and head back toward the inner system. It will return home to Earth's neighborhood briefly in December 2026 for another gravity assist. Finally, it will travel approximately 1.8 billion miles to the vicinity of Jupiter and ultimately, Europa.
“Congratulations to our Europa Clipper team for beginning the first journey to an ocean world beyond Earth,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, in a statement. “NASA leads the world in exploration and discovery, and the Europa Clipper mission is no different. By exploring the unknown, Europa Clipper will help us better understand whether there is the potential for life not just within our solar system, but among the billions of moons and planets beyond our Sun.”
The spacecraft will get within 16 miles of Europa’s surface carrying nine instruments including ice-penetrating radar, cameras, thermal instruments for measuring surface temperatures, and more. Powering those instruments at a distance of roughly half a billion miles from the Sun meant building the largest solar array ever used for an interplanetary mission. Europa Clipper successfully unfurled its solar panels, stretching out to its complete 100-foot wingspan, shortly after launch.
Europa Clipper’s main goal is to determine if Europa has conditions suitable for life. Preliminary data collected by other spacecraft and by earthbound astronomers suggest that Europa contains a global subsurface saltwater ocean larger than all of Earth’s oceans combined. There’s also evidence of organic compounds and energy sources (thermal vents) in the water, providing most of the necessary ingredients for life. Beginning in 2031, with the first of 49 flybys, Europa Clipper will endeavor to determine the thickness of the ice shell, interactions between the surface and the subsurface ocean, and the moon’s composition and geology. And if we’re lucky, we might just find out that we’re not alone.
In the meantime, catch up with Resident Alien, streaming now on Peacock.
