The Sextant: Europa Clipper Newsletter

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

NASA's upcoming mission to investigate the habitability of Jupiter's icy moon Europa now has a formal name: Europa Clipper.

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