Europa Clipper -- Launching This Week: Then, At Decade's End, Cataloging Potential Life -- Out By Jupiter...

We have waited a decade already, for the follow up mission to Juno -- and a closer study of the water vapors venting from cracks in the ice, on Europa. This is likely the best place in our local system to seek out evidence of non-terrestrial life. [Just one of dozens of my prior backgrounders, here.]

But to be clear, due to a fuel-conserving trajectory, the mission won't even enter orbit around Europa until this decade is at an end. I will guarantee, however, whatever we learn then, and there -- will have been worth the nearly 20 year wait, here.

Watch the launch NASA-TV on Thursday, October 10, 2024 (weather permitting, of course, with another hurricane, this one called Milton, due into Florida by the night before):

. . .Europa Clipper will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion km) to reach Jupiter in April 2030. The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter, and conduct 49 close flybys of Europa. On each orbit, the spacecraft will spend less than a day in the dangerous radiation zone near Europa before zipping back out. . . .

Two to three weeks later, it will repeat the process. The spacecraft carries nine science instruments, and a gravity experiment that uses the telecommunications system. All science instruments will operate simultaneously on every pass. . . .

Now you know -- and despite the severity of hurricane seasons increasing due to our own (and still reversible) contributions to climate change, we hold great optimism -- for the probability that by 2030, we will have definitive signatures of biological activity, in the liquid water oceans below the ice of Europa. Onward, smiling. . . ever, smiling.

नमस्ते