Small Steps, Giant Leaps: Episode 142: Europa Clipper: Voyage to a Water World

Europa Clipper is NASA’s first mission dedicated to studying an icy ocean world. Launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on October 14, 2024, from Kennedy Space Center, the spacecraft is set to arrive at Jupiter in April of 2030 to conduct sweeping flybys of Europa. Europa is one of Jupiter’s four large Galilean moons. It’s roughly the size of our own moon, but what’s most is intriguing is that it may harbor the conditions for life in the massive ocean beneath its frozen surface. What we learn could open up the science floodgates to other ocean worlds across the solar system.