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Europa Clipper High Gain Antenna Install

Workers in blue overalls and white head covers guide Europa Clipper's high gain antenna as it's installed on the spacecraft.
Source: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Published: July 8, 2024
Historical Date: June 17, 2024

Technicians prepare to install the nearly 10 feet (3 meters) wide dish-shaped high-gain antenna to NASA’s Europa Clipper, a spacecraft to study Jupiter’s icy moon, at the agency’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, June 17, 2024.

The spacecraft will perform a series of flybys of the Jupiter moon Europa to gather data on its atmosphere, icy crust, and the ocean underneath, and the high-gain antenna will send the research data to scientists on Earth to determine if the moon can support habitable condition.

The Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A no earlier than October 2024.

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