Europa Clipper – Spaceflight Now

NASA decides to launch Europa Clipper on commercial rocket in 2024

February 11, 2021 Stephen Clark

NASA has decided to launch the multibillion-dollar Europa Clipper mission — a spacecraft to study a moon of Jupiter with an icy crust covering a liquid water ocean — aboard a commercial heavy-lift rocket in October 2024, and not on the government-owned Space Launch System, officials said Wednesday.

Juno team planning close flybys of Jupiter’s moons

October 12, 2020 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Juno spacecraft could perform the first close flybys since the early 2000s of three of Jupiter’s largest moons, including Europa, if the space agency grants the mission an extension, Juno’s lead scientist said recently.

Water plumes on Europa detected by Galileo spacecraft

May 14, 2018 William Harwood

A review of data captured by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft as it orbited Jupiter in the 1990s indicates it likely flew through a plume of water vapor spewing from cracks in the surface of the moon Europa, providing independent evidence water is being released from a vast sub-surface ocean beneath its frozen crust, scientists said Monday.

Space Launch System, planetary exploration get big boosts in NASA budget

March 23, 2018 Stephen Clark

NASA’s planned rocket to send humans back to the moon and the agency’s solar system exploration program were big winners in a $20.7 billion budget passed by Congress and signed by President Trump on Friday.

New discoveries raise prospects for life on moons of Jupiter and Saturn

April 13, 2017 Stephen Clark

Scientists announced Thursday that measurements from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft detected hydrogen gas, a key energy source for microbial life, in a plume gushing from a vast liquid water ocean buried beneath the icy shell of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

Trump budget blueprint focuses on deep space exploration, commercial partnerships

March 16, 2017 William Harwood

The Trump administration is proposing $19.1 billion for NASA in its fiscal 2018 budget blueprint, a 0.8 percent decrease from 2017 funding levels, focusing on deep space exploration, both human and robotic, and increased public-private partnerships to lower costs and encourage private sector innovation.

Q&A with Alvaro Gimenez, ESA’s director of science

December 9, 2015 Stephen Clark

Alvaro Giménez Cañete manages the European Space Agency’s science program, a portfolio with a budget of nearly $600 million this year, and he recently spoke with Spaceflight Now about Europe’s hopes to build a gravitational wave observatory, the ExoMars mission to Mars, and tagging along with NASA’s probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa.

NASA invites ESA to build Europa piggyback probe

April 10, 2015 Stephen Clark

After walking away from a previously planned joint mission to Jupiter, NASA has asked the European Space Agency if it can furnish a lander or ice-penetrating probe for a rejuvenated U.S.-led robotic spacecraft to visit Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Europa Clipper concept team aims for launch in 2022

March 10, 2015 Stephen Clark

With a commitment from the Obama administration finally in hand after more than a decade of studies and concept papers, NASA expects to give the green light this year for development of a robotic probe to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa that could launch as soon as 2022.