NASA's Europa Clipper mission began with a fiery launch on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. Credit: SpaceX
NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft lifted off Monday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, kicking off a $5.2 billion robotic mission to explore one of the most promising locations in the Solar System for finding extraterrestrial life.
The Falcon Heavy rocket fired its 27 kerosene-fueled engines and vaulted away from Launch Complex 39A at 12:06 pm EDT (16:06 UTC) Monday. Delayed several days due to Hurricane Milton, which passed through Central Florida late last week, the launch of Europa Clipper signaled the start of a five-and-a-half year journey to Jupiter, where the spacecraft will settle into an orbit taking it repeatedly by one the giant planet's numerous moons.
The moon of Jupiter that has most captured scientists' interest, Europa, is sheathed in ice. There's strong evidence of a global ocean of liquid water below Europa's frozen crust, and Europa Clipper is going there to determine if it has the ingredients for life.
"This is an epic mission," said Curt Niebur, Europa Clipper's program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "It's a chance for us not to explore a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today, right now."
Europa has been near the top of the to-do list for planetary scientists since NASA's Voyager probes returned the first up-close images of Jupiter's moons in 1979. A follow-up mission, named Galileo, orbited Jupiter for nearly eight years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Galileo probe discovered a signature that Europa hides a watery ocean below its icy sheen.
But concepts for a dedicated Europa mission had trouble gaining political momentum, and for the last quarter-century, projects studying a Europa probe were canceled almost as quickly as they started. Then, a Texas congressman with a lifelong interest in space science took the chairmanship of an appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA's budget.
Former Rep. John Culberson, a Republican representing a district in suburban Houston, became Washington's most powerful patron for a Europa mission. He tucked funding for a Europa probe in several NASA budgets that went through his subcommittee, until NASA and the Obama administration formally backed the mission that became Europa Clipper in 2015.