Europa Clipper Started its 5+ Year trip today

NASA's Europa Clipper satellite to explore the named moon of Jupiter lifted off today at 12:06 PM EDT from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.  The launch, originally set for Thursday the 10th, was delayed by Hurricane Milton and days of cleanup. 

The Falcon Heavy lifts off this morning (Oct. 14) from the Kennedy Space Center carrying NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft. Credit: Brandon Lindner

The skies were that clear and blue down here at "Castle Graybeard" as well, giving us good views through the two side boosters and the core booster being dropped sequentially.  All three Falcon 9 cores were expended due to the size of the satellite and the needed trajectory using up all available fuel. 

Europa Clipper is one of NASA’s most expensive science missions yet, with an estimated total lifecycle cost, including four years of operations after arriving at Jupiter in 2030, of $5.2 billion. It was one of the top priorities for flagship-class planetary science missions in decadal surveys by planetary scientists, building on proposals for Europa orbiters or flyby missions for at least two decades.
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The spacecraft weighed 5,700 kilograms fully fueled at launch (6.28 tons) and its solar arrays, when fully deployed, will make the spacecraft 30.5 meters (100 feet) long.

The solar arrays are a bit longer than an NBA basketball court, but recent experience with solar arrays like that have been easier to live with than nuclear power sources like the Radioisotope Thermal Generators that have powered the Voyager satellites for 47 years.

While you'll see many places describing the mission as searching for life on the frigid moon, NASA/JPL won't use those that term. 

The spacecraft will not search for life itself but rather see if the moon does have the right conditions to support life. “We continue to underscore that Europa Clipper is not actually a life-detection mission but a habitability investigation,” said Gina DiBraccio, acting director of NASA’s planetary science division, at an Oct. 13 briefing about the mission’s science.

“We want to understand whether Europa has the key ingredients to support life in its oceans,” said Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at the briefing.

Europa Clipper is equipped with nine dedicated instruments ranging from cameras and spectrometers to magnetometers, as well as a gravity and radio science experiment. Much like the predecessor Juno satellite which has been orbiting Jupiter for well over eight years, Europa Clipper will enter an orbit that loops around Europa, currently said to orbit 49 times.  The flight to Europa is described as taking five years, but it's more like 5-1/2, with arrival expected in April 2030.  

You probably recall that the controversy a few years ago was that Europa Clipper had been set to fly on the SLS with its Exploration Upper Stage - which has never flown. I don't know an expected date, but would guess it won't fly until the probe is orbiting Europa  and well into its mission.  Then there's the issue that SLS missions are estimated to cost $4.4 billion (WITHOUT the EUS); today's Falcon Heavy launch cost $178 million.

They're not exactly the same missions.  SLS with the EUS could have gotten Europa Clipper to Europa faster - three years instead of 5-1/2 - if only it existed. And they could afford another $5 billion for the launch vehicle. The spacecraft will instead make a gravity assist flyby of Mars early next year and of Earth in late 2026 to arrive at Jupiter in April 2030.