The Sextant: Europa Clipper Newsletter

Finding plumes at Europa is an exciting prospect, but scientists warn it’ll be tricky, even from up close.

Tidal heating has likely allowed a vast ocean beneath Europa’s icy shell to remain liquid for the whole history of our solar system. For any potential life, that’s a good thing. Europa Clipper will reveal the ins and outs of tidal heating.

Take a closer look at the complex choreography involved in building NASA’s Europa Clipper as the mission to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa approaches its 2024 launch date.

NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for Earth’s first mission to conduct detailed investigations of Jupiter's moon Europa.

Jupiter’s moon Europa and its global ocean may currently have conditions suitable for life. Scientists are studying processes on the icy surface as they prepare to explore.

Jupiter’s icy moon Europa may be the most promising place in the solar system to find present-day environments suitable for life beyond Earth.

Jupiter’s moon Europa has an icy crust covering a vast, global ocean. The rocky layer underneath may be hot enough to melt, leading to undersea volcanoes.

Jupiter’s moon Europa may have the potential to harbor life. The spacecraft will use multiple flybys of the moon to investigate the habitability of this ocean world.

In an unprecedented year, the Europa Clipper project continues on the path toward unprecedented science.

Scientists have theorized on the origin of the water plumes possibly erupting from Jupiter's moon Europa. Recent research adds a new potential source to the mix.

New lab experiments re-create the environment of Europa and find that the icy moon shines, even on its nightside. The effect is more than just a cool visual.

The surface of Jupiter's moon Europa features a widely varied landscape, including ridges, bands, small rounded domes and disrupted spaces that geologists call "chaos terrain." Three newly reprocessed images, taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s, reveal details in diverse surface features on Europa.

An icy ocean world in our solar system that could tell us more about the potential for life on other worlds is coming into focus with confirmation of the Europa Clipper mission's next phase.

Scientists discovered that the yellow color visible on portions of the surface of Europa is actually sodium chloride, a compound known on Earth as table salt, which is also the principal component of sea salt.

A full-scale prototype antenna, which at 10 feet tall is the same height as a standard basketball hoop, is in the Experimental Test Range (ETR) at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

Students and families can meet a Mars rover, take a virtual tour through our solar system and explore alien worlds with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the Clippers SciFest SoCal.

NASA has decided to replace the current magnetometer on the upcoming Europa Clipper mission with a less complex instrument.

New comprehensive mapping of the radiation pummeling Jupiter’s icy moon Europa reveals where scientists should look -- and how deep they’ll have to go -- when searching for signs of habitability and biosignatures.

New animation shows how “bands” and “grooves” in the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa could transport subsurface water to the moon’s surface.

The Preliminary Design Phase of the project continues at full speed.

Scientists re-examining data from an old mission bring new insights to the tantalizing question of whether Jupiter’s moon Europa has the ingredients to support life.

NASA will host a Science Chat at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT Monday, May 14), to discuss the latest analysis of Jupiter’s moon Europa and its status as one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for life.

The Europa Clipper project team continues to grow as we move into more detailed design of the equipment, and it is gratifying to see such a geographically distributed team work well together.

This color-enhanced image of Jupiter and two of its largest moons – Io and Europa – was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed its eighth flyby of the gas giant planet.

Two veteran NASA missions are providing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

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