SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Launches NASA Europa Clipper Probe to Explore Jupiter's Icy Ocean Moon (Video)

Europa Clipper has finally set sail.

NASA's Europa Clipper probe blasted off today (October 14) on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, kicking off a highly anticipated astrobiology mission to Jupiter's ocean moon Europa.

Liftoff from KSC Pad 39A occurred at 12:06 p.m. EDT (1606 GMT) as the 27 Merlin engines of the powerful rocket's first stage roared to life, sending Clipper into the sky.

“The launch of the Falcon Heavy with Europa Clipper reveals the secrets of a vast ocean that lurks beneath the icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa,” said NASA launch commentator Derrol Nail as the powerful rocket lifted off from the launch site today.

Close-up of a white rocket climbing into a blue sky

The Falcon Heavy carries Europa Clipper into the skies of Florida. (Image credit: NASA TV)

The Falcon Heavy's two side boosters' engines shut down about three minutes into the flight and separated from the rocket's central core, which continued for another minute.

Related: Facts about SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket

Separation of the second stage from the core booster occurred approximately four minutes after launch. Europa Clipper launched on an interplanetary trajectory as planned 58 minutes after this milestone. And a few minutes later, the team established communication with the spacecraft, drawing cheers and applause from mission control.

Thanks to Mother Nature, today's launch came a few days later than originally planned. NASA and SpaceX originally planned the launch on Thursday (October 10), but postponed the planning to wait out Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida's Gulf Coast on Wednesday evening (October 9).

NASA closed KSC to weather the storm. As part of these preparations, Europa Clipper was secured in a SpaceX hangar near Pad 39A.

A groundbreaking heavy start

Today's launch was the 11th overall for the Falcon Heavy and its second interplanetary mission. It was also the first Falcon Heavy launch to require full use of the vehicle's three first stage boosters.

Typically, the first stage boosters for Spacex's Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 rockets store enough fuel to perform landing burns that can be recovered and reused on future launches.

NASA psyche The asteroid probe – the first interplanetary spacecraft to fly on a Falcon Heavy – launched almost exactly a year ago, on October 13, 2023, and required full use of the rocket's central core. But the two side boosters returned safely that day and landed below Pad 39A. Europa Clipper, on the other hand, needed all the power that Falcon Heavy could muster to make its way to the Jupiter system.

A long way to the launch pad

In late 2015, Congress directed NASA to launch the Europa Clipper Space Launch System (SLS), NASA's giant moon rocket.

The SLS was still in development at this point and would remain in development for a few more years. Delays with the powerful rocket and the need to use at least the first three SLS vehicles for launches of NASA's Artemis lunar program threw the Europa Clipper launch date into doubt. (SLS debuted in late 2022 and successfully dispatched the unmanned version Artemis 1 Mission to the moon.)

The U.S. House of Representatives' 2021 budget proposal directed NASA to launch Europa Clipper by 2025, “if available” on an SLS. Those two crucial words set the probe on its way to a commercial launch vehicle, which turned out to be the Falcon Heavy.

However, the change did not come without some compromises. The enormous power of the SLS – the most powerful rocket ever to fly an operational mission – would have propelled Europa Clipper directly to the Jupiter system in less than three years.

The journey will now take about twice as long, even though Falcon Heavy was in fully expendable mode. Europa Clipper has to perform Mars flyby (in February 2025) and a Earth flyby (in December 2026) to gain enough speed to reach its destination in April 2030.

Missile problems weren't the only problems on the Europa Clipper's path to the launch pad. Rising costs for the $5 billion spacecraft, for example, prompted NASA to do so to cancel development of one of the probe's scientific instruments — the Interior Characterization of Europa Using Magnetometry (ICEMAG), a magnetometer for measuring Europa Magnetic field.

And in May 2024, NASA discovered that transistors similar to those aboard the Europa Clipper, which are responsible for regulating electricity on the probe, “failed at lower than expected doses of radiation.” The revelation ultimately prompted NASA to conduct further testing of the hardware finally At the end of August, the study confirmed that “the transistors can support the base mission” into the radiation-rich environment around Jupiter.

Related: NASA's Europa Clipper is on track for an October launch to Jupiter's icy moon despite radiation concerns

An ambitious mission to a fascinating moon

Europa Clipper is one of NASA's most exciting and ambitious missions ever. Take the probe itself: It's the largest spacecraft the agency has ever built for a planetary mission. It weighed about 13,000 pounds (6,000 kilograms) at launch and will be about 100 feet (30 meters) long with its solar panels extended – larger than a basketball court.

Then there's the probe's target. Europa is one of Jupiter's four Galilean moons. Covered with a frozen outer crust that scientists believe has a vast ocean of liquid salt water sloshing beneath it, it is widely considered one of the best places in the solar system to harbor extraterrestrial life.

In addition, studies already in 2012 began observing potential plumes of water emanating from Europa's surface. Some researchers suspect so those clouds and the vents from which they bubble up could hold clues to life beneath the moon's icy crust.

NASA scientists are quick to clarify that Europa Clipper will not be looking for life on Europa, only the potential for the environment beneath its surface to support life.

“If there is life on Europa in this habitable environment that we are exploring, it will be under the ocean, so we cannot see it,” said Bonnie Buratti, Europa Clipper deputy project scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said during a news conference in September.

“We're looking for chemicals on the surface, organic chemicals that are the precursors of life. There are dream things that we could observe,” Buratti said, “like DNA or RNA, but we don't expect to see those.” (The mission) is actually just looking for a habitable environment and evidence of the ingredients of life, not for to life itself.

Clipper will also characterize Europe's ice shell in detail. This work could identify good places where a life-threatening lander – a future mission NASA is tasked with developing by Congress – could land and operate.

Europa Clipper will collect data using a suite of nine scientific instruments, including visible light and thermal cameras, multiple spectrometers and devices that will characterize Europa's magnetic environment. Together, this hardware will help mission scientists achieve three main goals, according to NASA's Europa Clipper page:

Determine the thickness of Europa's ice shell and understand how Europa's ocean interacts with the surface.
Study the composition of Europe's ocean to determine whether it has the ingredients necessary to support and sustain life.
Study how Europa's surface features formed and locate any signs of recent activity, such as: B. sliding crustal plates or clouds that allow water to escape into space.

Clipper also brings some culture from Earth to the Jupiter system – “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” written by U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón. The poem is engraved in her own handwriting on a metal plate that serves as a seal for the probe's “vault,” helping to protect its instruments and key electronics from radiation.

The poem is part of NASA's “Message in a Bottle” campaign, which also has a small chip engraved with the names of 2.6 million people who wanted to have a piece of themselves flown to Europe.

Dozens of flybys of Europe

If all goes according to plan, Europa Clipper will enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. When it gets there, the spacecraft will perform an insertion burn lasting six to eight hours, expelling 50 to 60% of the probe's 6,000 pounds (2,722 kilograms) of fuel.

The combustion puts the probe into an elliptical orbit around the Earth Gas giant. It will then begin a long series of maneuvers to adjust its trajectory so that the probe can study Europa up close over about 45 flybys. (Clipper will remain in orbit around Jupiter; an orbit around Europa would have been too risky for the mission given the moon's intense radiation environment.)

The first flyby of Europe will not take place until spring 2031. NASA will use this first pass to make further course corrections to the Clipper in preparation for the spacecraft's first science campaign. Starting in May 2031, Europa Clipper will focus its sensor array on the Moon's anti-Jovian side (the hemisphere away from Jupiter) in dozens of flybys, flying up to 25 kilometers above the surface. A second scientific campaign will begin two years later, in May 2033, in the Jupiter-facing hemisphere of Europa.

The planned end of Europa Clipper's mission is set for September 2034, when NASA plans to crash the spacecraft Ganymedeanother Galilean moon of Jupiter. This disposal strategy was chosen because Ganymede is considered a relatively unfavorable habitat for life and mission team members want to ensure that they do not contaminate the potentially life-harboring Europa with microbes from Earth.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. ET on October 14 with news that Europa Clipper was successfully deployed and communication with mission control was established.

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