October 14, 2024
This day will be recorded in history as a NASA mission was launched to discover a habitable ocean planet.
NASA sent the Europa Clipper mission on October 14th, 2024. According to NASA, the Europa Clipper was launched at 12:06 p.m. EDT at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, making it the largest piece of spacecraft NASA has made to travel to another planet.
During this space voyage, the spacecraft is set to travel 1.8 billion miles “on a trajectory that will leverage the power of gravity assists, first to Mars in four months and then back to Earth for another gravity assist flyby in 2026. After it begins orbiting Jupiter in April 2030, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times.” ( according to jpl.nasa.gov )
Currently, NASA’s Europa Clipper seems to be heading in the right direction and progressing as planned. In more detail, five minutes after this spacecraft took off, the so-called “nose-cone” of the rocket was opened, which revealed the actual Europa Clipper ( good progress ), and an hour after that update, we received word that “the spacecraft separated from the rocket. Ground controllers received a signal soon after, and two-way communication was established at 1:13 p.m,” and NASA’s Australian Deep Space Network received the connection for communication.
After these progressions, NASA administrator Bill Nelson stated, “Congratulations to our Europa Clipper team for beginning the first journey to an ocean world beyond Earth. 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.” This was an encouraging message from Bill Nelson in an attempt to move forward and continue with these improvements and discoveries in space science and in what ways this can affect our future worldwide.
This NASA mission had the intention to discover if the so-called “moon planet,” Europa, could withstand life or be habitable to any life; NASA had this belief of Euopa’s possibility to support life since the 1990 Galileo mission, which gave us the information that under the ice layer of Europa can be some sort of ocean in which can hold “organic compounds and energy sources” said by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And if this scientific assumption turns out to be accurate, it can be a huge step to further space studies with the knowledge that there can be more possible planets that can withstand life, and it can change the perception of space studies moving forward.
Laurie Leshin, the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, comments, “We’re ecstatic to send Europa Clipper on its way to explore a potentially habitable ocean world, thanks to our colleagues and partners who’ve worked so hard to get us to this day…Europa Clipper will undoubtedly deliver mind-blowing science. While it is always bittersweet to send something we’ve labored over for years off on its long journey, we know this remarkable team and spacecraft will expand our knowledge of our solar system and inspire future exploration.”
