NASA To Livestream Exciting Hunt For Alien Life On A Habitable Ocean Moon, Watch Here
Joining the journey with the Europa Clipper will be a special vault plate, which will have a visual representation of the word water in 103 spoken languages on one side, and an engraving of US Poet Laureate Ada Limon’s poem “In Praise of Mystery. A Poem for Europa,” an engraving of the Drake Equation, and tribute to planetary scientist Ron Greeley on the other side.
The mission’s three main science objectives are to understand the nature of the ice shell and the ocean beneath it, as well as the moon’s composition and geology. Scientists involved with the mission hope to gain a better understanding of the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond Earth.
Europa Clipper will travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Jupiter. It will then orbit the giant gas planet, and conduct 49 close flyby’s of its moon, Europa. On each orbit, the spacecraft will spend less than a day in the radiation zone near Europa before exiting back out. It will repeat the process two to three weeks later. According to NASA, the spacecraft carries nine science instruments, and a gravity experiment that uses the telecommunications system. All nine science instruments will operate simultaneously on every pass.
The spacecraft itself is about 16 feet in height. With its arrays deployed, it spans more than 100 feet, and has a dry mass (no propellant tanks) of 7,145 pounds. It massive solar arrays will collect enough light for the spacecraft’s power needs as it operates in the Jupiter system, which NASA says is five times as far from the Sun as Earth.
At the time of this writing, NASA plans on beginning live coverage of pre-launch and launch activities for Europa Clipper at 11am EDT, with launch being no earlier than 12:06pm EDT, Monday, October 14. Coverage can be viewed via the YouTube link above, or on NASA’s website.
