If we confirm the presence of a liquid ocean and find evidence of recent geological activity, we would be one step closer to determining whether Europa could harbour life”
NASA has taken a bold step towards the exploration of the outer solar system with the successful launch of the Europa Clipper mission on 14 October, 2024. At a budget of 4.9 million dollars, the main objective of this ambitious mission is to research Europa, one of Jupiter’s most intriguing moons, in search of conditions that could harbour life.
“Europa Clipper represents a significant milestone in our search for life beyond Earth”, Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, declared during the post-launch press conference. “This mission will allow us to explore one of the most promising places in our solar system for the existence of extraterrestrial life”.
This spacecraft, the size of a school bus and equipped with solar panels large as a basketball court, will now begin a six-year journey through deep space. Using gravity assist manoeuvers past Mars and Earth, Europa Clipper is expected to reach the Jovian system by April, 2030.
Once there, the probe will adopt a unique mission strategy. Instead of directly orbiting Europe, the ship will orbit Jupiter, performing 49 flybys of the icy moon. “This strategy allows us to collect detailed data while minimizing the ship’s exposure to Jupiter’s intense radiation”, Robert Pappalardo, a scientist assigned to the Europa Clipper project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explained.
Europa Clipper is equipped with nine cutting-edge instruments designed to research the composition of Europa’s surface, search for water plumes that could be emerging through cracks on the ice and probe the moon’s internal structure. One of the most crucial instruments is the REASON ice penetrating radar, which will attempt to determine the thickness of the ice crust and detect whether there is indeed a saltwater ocean under Europa’s icy surface.
“If we confirm the presence of a liquid ocean and find evidence of recent geological activity, we would be one step closer to determining whether Europa could harbour life”, Xianzhe Jia, mission co-investigator from Michigan University, said.
The extremely hostile radiation environment around Jupiter poses one of the greatest challenges for the mission. In order to protect its delicate instrumentation, Europa Clipper counts with a 150 kg aluminium “vault” that contains most of the spacecraft’s electronics. Thanks to this innovation, the mission can operate under conditions that would have been prohibitive for previous designs.
As Europa Clipper completes its flybys during its primary 3.5 year mission, scientists expect to achieve an unprecedented understanding of Europa. And, while the spacecraft is not designed to directly detect life, it will provide crucial information about whether Europa could have the necessary conditions to harbour life as we know it.
“The results could revolutionise our comprehension of the ocean worlds in our solar system and beyond”, assured Kate Craft, planetary scientist of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “This mission has a great potential to change our outlook about the universe’s habitability”.
Europa Clipper represents a significant step in the exploration of the outer solar system and, as it ventures into deep space, it brings us closer to answering the great question: are we alone in the universe? Regardless of its findings, the mission promises to expand our knowledge of the cosmos and our place in it, opening a new and exciting chapter in the history of space exploration.
