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The puzzling surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa looms large in this reprocessed color view made from images taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. The images were assembled into a realistic color view of the surface that approximates how Europa would appear to the human eye. [Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute]
Jet Propulsion Laboratory is leading a groundbreaking mission to explore the potential for life on one of Jupiter’s moons, with the Europa Clipper spacecraft scheduled to launch no earlier than Monday, Oct. 14.
The mission, managed by JPL in Pasadena, aims to investigate whether Europa’s subsurface ocean could harbor the ingredients necessary for life. The launch is targeted from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
Europa Clipper will conduct 49 close flybys of the icy moon over an unspecified period, using a suite of nine instruments to peer beneath its frozen crust, analyze its composition, and determine the ocean’s depth.
“It’s important to us to paint a picture of what that alien ocean is like — the kind of chemistry or even biochemistry that could be happening there,” said Morgan Cable, an astrobiologist and Europa Clipper science team member at JPL.
The spacecraft’s instruments, several developed at JPL, include Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE), which will identify organic materials, and Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON), which will peer up to 18 miles into the ice shell. Other instruments include Europa Imaging System (EIS), Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), MAss SPectrometer for Planetary EXploration/Europa (MASPEX), and SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA).
These tools will work in concert to map Europa’s surface, measure its magnetic field, and sample any material ejected from the moon.
The mission will also search for potential water plumes erupting from Europa’s surface, similar to those observed on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Europa Ultraviolet Spectrograph (Europa-UVS) will hunt for these plumes and study any material venting into space, which could provide easier access to the subsurface ocean.
To investigate Europa’s internal structure, the mission will use Europa Clipper Magnetometer (ECM) and Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) to measure the moon’s induced magnetic field and electrical currents from charged particles.
Steve Vance, a JPL astrobiologist and geophysicist on the science team, noted that the mission could reveal pockets of water within Europa’s icy shell, potentially creating habitable environments.
JPL, which is managed by Caltech, leads the mission’s development in partnership with other NASA centers and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. The Pasadena-based lab designed key components of the spacecraft and will oversee mission operations.
The Europa Clipper mission represents a significant step in the search for life beyond Earth, with JPL at the forefront of this exploration. Its three main objectives are to determine the ice shell thickness, investigate Europa’s composition, and characterize its geology. The mission will specifically look for organic compounds that form life’s building blocks.
“It’s almost certain Europa Clipper will raise as many questions or more than it answers — a whole different class than the ones we’ve been thinking of for the last 25 years,” Vance said.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center, is managing the launch service for the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
This mission builds on knowledge gained from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which provided detailed images of Europa in the late 1990s. Those images revealed Europa’s puzzling icy surface, hinting at the complex alien world that Europa Clipper now aims to explore in depth.
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