NASA plans to launch the Europa Clipper, a mission that will orbit Jupiter’s icy moon, in later this year for a six-year journey through the Jovian system.

The main science objective of Europa Clipper is to characterize the habitability of Europa. The spacecraft will conduct multiple flybys to gather measurements about the moon’s surface composition, its ice shell thickness, and the nature of its subsurface ocean. To do this, it is packed with state-of-the-art instruments: ice-penetrating radar, high-resolution cameras, and spectrometers that detect chemicals in Europa’s surface and atmosphere.

The objectives for this audacious new fly-by mission are ambitious – not just to look for evidence of Europa’s ‘habitability’, whatever that turns out to mean, but to better understand the rate and nature of the geological processes that shape the moon’s features on its surface. The Europa Clipper mission will also learn about the ongoing interactions between Europa and Jupiter’s magnetic field, which creates a ‘radiation belts’ of tremendously intense energy around the Jovian moon.

Not only will its data help us understand Europa, but if it finds that Europa is habitable, it will also contribute to the larger puzzle of where life is most likely in the entire Galaxy.

The Europa Clipper mission would signal another extension of our planetary exploration. A flyby of Europa would open up a whole new world. By heading out on this expedition, or others to Jupiter’s smaller, icy moons in the coming years, we’ll be stepping along a path that may someday lead to a definitive answer to the question of whether we stand alone in the Universe.

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