Later this year, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center with one of the most highly-anticipated and monumental planetary science missions of the decade — Europa Clipper. The mission will see the spacecraft travel to the smallest of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, Europa, to investigate the characteristics of the moon, including proving the existence of a subsurface ocean and the possibility of habitable conditions being contained within that ocean.
Europa Clipper is currently undergoing final construction and testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. Later this spring, testing will finish, and the spacecraft will be packaged up and shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where final launch preparations will begin — ultimately culminating in the launch of the spacecraft in October. NSF recently had the opportunity to visit Europa Clipper in its clean room at JPL’s Spacecraft Assembly Facility and ask Cynthia Phillips, project staff scientist at JPL, about the mission and the current state of progress toward launch.