NASA’s Europa Clipper — the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission — is already 20 million km (13 million miles) from Earth.
An artist’s concept of NASA’s Europa Clipper shows the spacecraft in silhouette against the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, with the magnetometer boom fully deployed at top and the antennas for the radar instrument extending out from the solar arrays. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Europa Clipper lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 14, 2024.
The spacecraft is zooming along at 35 km per second (22 miles per second) relative to the Sun.
Europa Clipper will travel 2.9 billion km (1.8 billion miles) to arrive at Jupiter in 2030 and in 2031 will begin a series of 49 flybys, using a suite of instruments to gather data that will tell scientists if the icy moon and its internal ocean have the conditions needed to harbor life.
For now, the information mission teams are receiving from the spacecraft is strictly engineering data, telling them how the hardware is operating.
Shortly after launch, Europa Clipper deployed its massive solar arrays, which extend the length of a basketball court.
Next on the list was the magnetometer’s boom, which uncoiled from a canister mounted on the spacecraft body, extending a full 8.5 m (28 feet).
To confirm that all went well with the boom deployment, the team relied on data from the magnetometer’s three sensors.
Once the spacecraft is at Jupiter, these sensors will measure the magnetic field around Europa, both confirming the presence of the ocean thought to be under the moon’s icy crust and telling scientists about its depth and salinity.
After the magnetometer, the spacecraft deployed several antennas for the radar instrument.
Now extending crosswise from the solar arrays, the four high-frequency antennas form what look like two long poles, each measuring 17.6 m (57.7 feet) long.
Eight rectangular very-high-frequency antennas, each 2.76 m (9 feet) long, were also deployed — two on the two solar arrays.
“It’s an exciting time on the spacecraft, getting these key deployments done,” said Europa Clipper project manager Jordan Evans, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Most of what the team is focusing on now is understanding the small, interesting things in the data that help them understand the behavior of the spacecraft on a deeper level. That’s really good to see.”
The remaining seven instruments will be powered on and off through December and January so that engineers can check their health.
Several instruments, including the visible imager and the gas and dust mass spectrometers, will keep their protective covers closed for the next three or so years to guard against potential damage from the Sun during Europa Clipper’s time in the inner Solar System.
Once all the instruments and engineering subsystems have been checked out, mission teams will shift their focus to Mars.
On March 1, 2025, Europa Clipper will reach Mars’ orbit and begin to loop around the Red Planet, using the planet’s gravity to gain speed.
Mission navigators already have completed one trajectory correction maneuver, as planned, to get the spacecraft on the precise course.
At Mars, they plan to turn on the spacecraft’s thermal imager to capture multicolored images of Mars as a test operation.
They also plan to collect data with the radar instrument so engineers can be sure it’s operating as expected.
The spacecraft will perform another gravity assist in December 2026, swooping by Earth before making the remainder of the long journey to the Jupiter system.
At that time, the magnetometer will measure Earth’s magnetic field, calibrating the instrument.
