Europa Clipper
What is Europa Clipper?
Probes & telescopes· Launched 2024-10-14 – arrival 2030-04 planned (cruising). NASA's largest planetary spacecraft arrives at Jupiter in 2030 for 49 Europa flybys, asking whether its buried ocean is habitable.
The orbit of Europa Clipper at this moment: https://nowsky.org/solar/orbit?fw=probe%3Aeuropaclipper&sp=12 — replayed live, no login.
Mission timeline
Spacecraft specs
| Launch | 2024-10-14 |
|---|---|
| Flybys | Mars 2025-03-01 · Earth 2026-12-03 |
| Jupiter arrival | 2030-04-11 (planned) |
| Plan | 49 Europa flybys |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Frequently asked
- When did Europa Clipper launch?
- 2024-10-14.
- What is the next milestone for Europa Clipper?
- 3 Dec 2026 — Europa Clipper Earth flyby.
- In one line, what is Europa Clipper?
- Probes & telescopes — NASA's largest planetary spacecraft arrives at Jupiter in 2030 for 49 Europa flybys, asking whether its buried ocean is habitable.
A poem engraved on the spacecraft
On the outside of Europa Clipper's electronics vault is engraved, in the poet's own handwriting, "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa" by the US Poet Laureate Ada Limón. The same plate carries a microchip holding 2.6 million names gathered by public invitation, and the waveforms of the word for "water" spoken in 103 languages — a spacecraft bound for a water world, carrying the word itself.
The other face of the plate bears the Drake equation in Frank Drake's handwriting, the formula from the 1970s for estimating alien civilisations, and a line showing the absorption spectrum of the water molecule. Unlike Pioneer's plaque or Voyager's golden record, the plate is not meant to be found: at the end of its mission Clipper is to be crashed into Ganymede, so it is less a message for whoever comes after than a signature from those who sent it.
The mission in depth
Europa Clipper is NASA's largest planetary spacecraft, its 30.5-m solar wings sized to harvest Jupiter's dim light. The destination: Europa's buried ocean.
Rather than orbit Europa inside Jupiter's murderous radiation belts, it orbits Jupiter and clips past Europa 49 times — sounding the ice with radar and tasting any plumes it can fly through.
Launched in 2024, with Mars (2025) and Earth (2026) flybys, it arrives in April 2030. Its verdict — is that ocean habitable? — will be one of the century's great answers.
Clipper flies past rather than orbits because of radiation: parked at Europa, its electronics would last months inside Jupiter's radiation belts. So it loops a wide Jovian orbit and dives at Europa 49 times, skimming as low as 25 km while radar and spectrometers probe the hidden ocean's depth, salt, and chemistry.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.