vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
NASA Mission Named 'Europa Clipper' – NASA's Europa Clipper
The Europa Clipper magnetometer has completed its rigorous testing and calibration at JPL and is ready for integration onto the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Europa Clipper's Magnetometer Testing is Complete, Ready for Integration

The short videos take audiences behind the scenes to learn more about how space missions come together.

New Video Series Captures Team Working on NASA's Europa Clipper

A new NASA study offers an explanation of how quakes could be the source of the mysteriously smooth terrain on moons circling Jupiter and Saturn. 

Icy Moonquakes: Surface Shaking Could Trigger Landslides 

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, who is known for work that explores the human connection to the natural world, is crafting a new poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission.

A Voice Among the Stars: Poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón Will Ride to Europa on NASA Spacecraft

La poetisa laureada estadounidense Ada Limón, conocida por su trabajo que explora la conexión humana con el mundo natural, está escribiendo un nuevo poema dedicado a la misión Europa Clipper de la NASA.

Una voz entre las estrellas: Poema de la poetisa laureada estadounidense Ada Limón viajará a Europa en una nave espacial de la NASA

Carlisa Drew went from being a commercial electrician to wiring the electrical system for NASA’s Europa Clipper propulsion module. 

Mission Dispatch: Wiring Europa Clipper's Propulsion Module

How will Europa Clipper see through Europa's thick ice shell to study the moon's ocean?

Mission Dispatch: Using Radar to Study Earth and Europa

Parallel ice ridges, a common feature on Jupiter’s moon Europa, are also found on Greenland’s ice sheet.

Greenland Ice, Jupiter Moon Share Similar Feature

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

Are Water Plumes Spraying From Europa? NASA's Europa Clipper Is on the Case
Science | Mission – NASA's Europa Clipper
Measuring Europa’s gravity at various points in the moon’s orbit will show how Europa flexes and help reveal its internal structure.
Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface (REASON)
Ice-penetrating radar will probe Europa’s icy shell for reflections from the moon’s suspected ocean, and study the ice’s structure and thickness. It will also study the moon’s surface topography, composition, and roughness.
Chemical Analysis
MAss Spectrometer for Planetary EXploration/Europa (MASPEX)
The mass spectrometer will analyze gases – both in Europa’s faint atmosphere and in possible plumes. It will study the chemistry of the moon’s suspected subsurface ocean, how ocean and surface exchange material, and how radiation alters compounds on the moon’s surface.
SUrface Dust Analyzer (SUDA)
Tiny meteorites eject bits of Europa’s surface into space, and a subsurface ocean or reservoirs might vent material into space as plumes. The dust analyzer will identify that material’s chemistry and area of origin, and offer clues to Europa’s ocean salinity.
Go farther: Explore the spacecraft's instruments in depth ›

For Scientists

For scientists looking for more in-depth information about Europa Clipper's science instruments, download the Europa Clipper Instrument Summaries fact sheet.

Related News

A new NASA study offers an explanation of how quakes could be the source of the mysteriously smooth terrain on moons circling Jupiter and Saturn. 

Icy Moonquakes: Surface Shaking Could Trigger Landslides 

Parallel ice ridges, a common feature on Jupiter’s moon Europa, are also found on Greenland’s ice sheet.

Greenland Ice, Jupiter Moon Share Similar Feature

The MISE team recently achieved a milestone for any telescope: first light.

Mission Dispatch: Imaging Spectrometer's First Light

Here are ten things to know about how Europa Clipper’s instruments will achieve the mission’s science objectives. 

10 Things to Know About Europa Clipper's Science Instruments

The most complex and demanding segment of Europa Clipper's trajectory is the three years when it performs repeated flybys of Jupiter's moon Europa. 

Mission Dispatch: Tweaking the Trajectory
Europa: A World of Ice, With Potential for Life – NASA's Europa Clipper
NASA extended the Juno mission beyond its prime mission (ending in July 2021) to continue operation through September 2025, or until the spacecraft’s end of life. The extension lets Juno explore beyond its primary science target, Jupiter, to the planet’s rings and moons. Juno now has multiple planned rendezvous with Europa, as well as Ganymede and Io.
The European Space Agency also plans to target Europa as part of the agency’s forthcoming JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission.
Europa’s Thick Dossier
Pioneer 10 kicked things off. The spacecraft flew by Jupiter in 1973 and performed the first survey of the planet and its moons. In 1979, Voyager 2 captured the first close images of Europa, to reveal ridges and cracks on the moon’s surface. It also showed us that Europa might be geologically active today.

From 1995 to 2003, the Galileo spacecraft orbited Jupiter and studied the Jovian system. Galileo made 12 close passes of Europa and provided more detailed views of the icy moon. It also found the best evidence for a Europan ocean: an "induced magnetic field" that strongly suggested a salty water layer under the ice.
In 2012 the Hubble Space Telescope observed intriguing evidence that plumes of water vapor might be erupting from Europa. In 2018, scientists revisited Galileo data and found further evidence for plumes there.
Scientists now have enough information about Europa to ask narrow, well-defined questions.
Does Europa really contain a liquid water ocean? What are the ocean’s depth, temperatures, saltiness, acidity, and other chemistry? Do compounds useful to microbes make their way from the moon’s surface and rocky mantle into the ocean? If Europa’s ocean is erupting into space as plumes, what can sampling the plumes reveal about its composition?
Answering those questions might guide us toward answering the real question – the BIG question.
The Big Question
Does Europa harbor life?
As yet, we have no evidence for life at Europa, but…
Between 50 and 80 percent of life on Earth is in the ocean.
On the Path Towards Unprecedented Science – NASA's Europa Clipper
Shown here is an interactive rendering of the spacecraft. Fully deployed, the spacecraft will be more than 5 meters (15 feet) tall, 17 meters (50 feet) long, and will span about 30 meters (100 feet) in width — longer than a basketball court from tip to tip of its solar arrays. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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The solar panels and overall physical structure visible in the interactive model are aspects of spacecraft subsystems that comprise the flight system. The science instruments, attached directly to the spacecraft or through a boom, are referred to as the payload. Europa Clipper’s antennas fall into both of these categories; some antennas provide only a spacecraft (telecom) function, other antennas provide only a science function (for the radar), and yet others perform both telecom and science (gravity and radio science) roles.
The Europa Clipper flight system design incorporates lessons learned from prior missions; the scientific instruments are at least partly based on interplanetary mission predecessors. Informed by those experiences, the spacecraft and its components are designed to be appropriately robust to the Europa environment. Europa Clipper’s components also need to be mutually compatible with one another while being operated. Given that, the testing and performance verification is designed to reflect “flying conditions” as well as possible. Let’s look at two subsystems whose fabrication is underway.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) engineers align the upper and lower cylinders of Europa Clipper’s propulsion module for a fit check. Credit: NASA/B. Lambert

The propulsion subsystem is essentially Europa Clipper’s “gas tank.” It will carry fuel and oxidizer sufficient to change Europa Clipper’s velocity by about 3,600 miles per hour (5,800 kilometers per hour). While this is a large amount and a critically important capability, it represents about five percent of the velocity change needed to accomplish this mission. The bulk of the velocity change necessary to adjust trajectories once in Jupiter orbit will come from gravitational flybys of Jovian moons as planned. Given the overall size of the tanks, the propulsion subsystem is designed as part of a “propulsion module” that includes the solar arrays and radiation monitors.
Meet Europa Clipper | Spacecraft – NASA's Europa Clipper
Europa Clipper’s propulsion module is an aluminum cylinder 10 feet (3 meters) long and 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide. It holds the spacecraft’s 24 engines and nearly 6,000 pounds (2,750 kilograms) of fuel in tanks, as well as the spacecraft’s helium pressurant tanks. 
Vault

Europa Clipper's electronics are enclosed in a vault with walls made of 1/3-inch thick (9.2-mm) sheets of aluminum-zinc alloy to protect the electronics from Jupiter’s intense radiation. These electronics include computers (or the “brains” of the spacecraft), flight software, and more. The vault is bolted to the spacecraft’s propulsion module and has wires to provide communications and control across the entire spacecraft.
Power

Europa Clipper’s “wings” - its solar arrays - span more than 100 feet (30.5 meters). Each wing is approximately 46.5 feet (14.2 meters) long and about 13.5 feet (4.1 meters) high. The huge arrays are needed to collect sunlight to power the spacecraft while it operates at Jupiter, which is more than five times as far from the Sun as Earth is.
Communications 

Europa Clipper’s 10-foot-diameter (3-meter-diameter) high-gain antenna (HGA) and other smaller radio antennas will be used to receive commands from Earth through NASA’s Deep Space Network. The antennas also will send data back to engineers and scientists. Europa Clipper’s antennas also will be used for gravity and radio science investigations, allowing scientists to study Europa’s gravity as the moon orbits Jupiter.
Guidance, Navigation, & Control

Europa Clipper will use sensors, cameras, and special hardware to determine and control its position in space. Europa Clipper’s two stellar reference units, informally called “star trackers,” are small cameras with a computer that carries a catalog of stars with known positions. 
As the cameras observes the starry sky, the computer matches the pattern of stars in the images to its star catalog and determines the spacecraft's orientation in space. Europa Clipper will also use four reaction wheels to stay pointed in the right direction.
FAQ | Mission – NASA's Europa Clipper
FAQ | Mission – NASA's Europa Clipper

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Europa

How big is Europa?

With an equatorial diameter of 1,940 miles (3,100 kilometers), Europa is about 90 percent the size of Earth’s Moon.

What is Europa? 

Europa is the smallest of the four largest moons orbiting Jupiter (including Io, Ganymede, and Callisto), and the sixth-closest to the planet of all the 79 moons of Jupiter. Slightly smaller than Earth's Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and has a water-ice crust and probably an iron-nickel core. It has a very thin atmosphere, composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is striated by cracks and streaks, but craters are relatively few. Scientists are almost certain that hidden beneath the icy surface of Europa is a saltwater ocean containing about twice as much water as Earth’s global ocean. It may be the most promising place in our solar system to find present-day environments suitable for some form of life beyond Earth. Learn more about Europa here. 
Europa was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei. The German astronomer Simon Marius claimed to have observed Jupiter's moons at about the same time as Galileo, and is commonly credited as being the co-discoverer of the moons. The moon was named after Europa, the Phoenician mother of King Minos of Crete, with whom Zeus (the Greek equivalent of the Roman god Jupiter) fell in love. In addition to Earth-bound telescope observations, Europa has been examined by a succession of space-probe flybys, the first occurring in the early 1970s. Learn more about the history of discovering and exploring Europa here. 

Is Europa habitable?

Europa is considered one of the most promising currently habitable environments in our solar system. 
Europa could have all the “ingredients” needed for life as we know it.
Poised for Science: NASA's Europa Clipper Instruments Are All Aboard – NASA's Europa Clipper
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Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
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Europa News

The spacecraft arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 23, 2024, for launch preparations.

NASA's Europa Clipper Makes Cross-Country Flight to Florida

Imagery from NASA's Juno spacecraft shows some intriguing features on the ice-encased Jovian moon.

NASA's Juno Provides High-Definition Views of Europa's Icy Shell

NASA has selected 40 undergraduate students for the first year of its Europa ICONS (Inspiring Clipper: Opportunities for Next-generation Scientists) internship program.

NASA Selects Students for Europa Clipper Intern Program

Members of the media put on “bunny suits” on April 11, 2024, to see Europa Clipper up close at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Media Get Close-Up of NASA's Jupiter-Bound Europa Clipper

We're thrilled to announce that NASA's 'Message in a Bottle' campaign has been nominated for a #Webby Award! We need your help to win! Cast your vote for our nomination.

Vote for Us! 'Message in a Bottle' Nominated for a Webby

A gantlet of tests prepared the spacecraft for its challenging trip to the Jupiter system, where it will explore the icy moon Europa and its subsurface ocean.

NASA's Europa Clipper Survives and Thrives in ‘Outer Space' on Earth

When it launches in October, NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will carry a richly layered dispatch that includes more than 2.6 million names submitted by the public.

NASA Unveils Design for Message Heading to Jupiter's Moon Europa
Europa Clipper's Surface Dust Analyzer Instrument Delivered to JPL – NASA's Europa Clipper
Science instruments and other hardware for the spacecraft will come together in the mission’s final phase before a launch to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa in 2024.

NASA Begins Assembly of Europa Clipper Spacecraft

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Europa Clipper Transport Plane Arrives in Florida

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2021 Europa Clipper Spacecraft (Artist's Concept)

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Europa Under Stress 

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Poised for Science: NASA's Europa Clipper Instruments Are All Aboard – NASA's Europa Clipper
Poised for Science: NASA's Europa Clipper Instruments Are All Aboard – NASA's Europa Clipper

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January 30, 2024

Poised for Science: NASA's Europa Clipper Instruments Are All Aboard

The science performed by the complex suite of instruments recently added to the spacecraft will reveal whether Jupiter’s moon Europa has conditions that could support life.

NASA’s Europa Clipper, with all of its instruments installed, is visible in the clean room of High Bay 1 at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Jan. 19. The tent around the spacecraft was erected to support electromagnetic testing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

With less than nine months remaining in the countdown to launch, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission has passed a major milestone: Its science instruments have been added to the massive spacecraft, which is being assembled at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Set to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in October, the spacecraft will head to Jupiter’s ice-encased moon Europa, where a salty ocean beneath the frozen surface may hold conditions suitable for life. Europa Clipper won’t be landing; rather, after arriving at the Jupiter system in 2030, the spacecraft will orbit Jupiter for four years, performing 49 flybys of Europa and using its powerful suite of nine science instruments to investigate the moon’s potential as a habitable environment.

Jupiter’s icy moon Europa holds a vast internal ocean that could have conditions suitable for life. NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will help scientists better understand the potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“The instruments work together hand in hand to answer our most pressing questions about Europa,” said JPL’s Robert Pappalardo, the mission’s project scientist. “We will learn what makes Europa tick, from its core and rocky interior to its ocean and ice shell to its very thin atmosphere and the surrounding space environment.”
The hallmark of Europa Clipper’s science investigation is how all of the instruments will work in sync while collecting data to accomplish the mission’s science objectives.
Assembly | Spacecraft – NASA's Europa Clipper
Cables are laid out, and more baseline tests are conducted to ensure none of the systems were disturbed during shipment. Final checkouts are performed, the spacecraft is fueled, and then it goes to spacecraft integration with the launch vehicle. The rocket, joined with its payload, is rolled out to the launchpad. The countdown and ensuing launch mark the final steps of ATLO.

Get Involved: Build Your Own Spacecraft
Want to learn more about the Europa Clipper spacecraft? Build your own version of Europa Clipper at home! Snap a photo of your model and share it on social media using the hashtag #EuropaClipper.​

Paper Model

Europa Clipper’s paper model is appropriate for students in grades 5+. Download the kit here.

Toy Bricks Model

Build a 1/48th scale model of the Europa Clipper spacecraft using toy bricks. Download the instructions here.

3D Print

Create your own 3D printed model of the Europa Clipper spacecraft. Download the file here.

Spacecraft News

Members of the media put on “bunny suits” on April 11, 2024, to see Europa Clipper up close at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

Media Get Close-Up of NASA's Jupiter-Bound Europa Clipper

When it launches in October, NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will carry a richly layered dispatch that includes more than 2.6 million names submitted by the public.

NASA Unveils Design for Message Heading to Jupiter's Moon Europa

The addition of a high-gain antenna will enable the agency’s Europa Clipper spacecraft – set to launch in October 2024 – to communicate with mission controllers hundreds of millions of miles away.

NASA's Europa Probe Gets a Hotline to Earth

The Europa Clipper magnetometer has completed its rigorous testing and calibration at JPL and is ready for integration onto the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Europa Clipper's Magnetometer Testing is Complete, Ready for Integration

The short videos take audiences behind the scenes to learn more about how space missions come together.

New Video Series Captures Team Working on NASA's Europa Clipper

The enormous spacecraft that will head to Jupiter’s moon Europa uses four large reaction wheels to help keep it oriented.
Media Get Close-Up of NASA’s Jupiter-Bound Europa Clipper - NASA
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Europa: A World of Ice, With Potential for Life – NASA's Europa Clipper
Latest News

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Accessibility

Managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
for
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

NASA Official/Program Executive: 
Dave Lavery

NASA Official/Program Scientist: 
Curt Niebur

Media Contact: 
Gretchen McCartney

Public Engagement Manager: 
Heather Doyle

Public Engagement Lead: 
Laurance Fauconnet

Social Media Lead: 
Bill Dunford

Science Writer: 
Sandy Marshall

Science Writer: 
Amanda Barnett