NASA’s Europa Clipper Heads To Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa

Scientists suspect that beneath Europa’s icy crust is a giant ocean of liquid water. They launched a spacecraft to investigate.

On October 14, NASA launched Europa Clipper, its largest planetary mission spacecraft yet. It’s headed to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which could have a giant ocean of liquid water hidden under its icy crust. And where there’s water, scientists think there may be evidence of life. The spacecraft is equipped with nine different instruments and will complete nearly 50 flybys of Europa, scanning almost the entire moon.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Padi Boyd, NASA astrophysicist and host of the agency’s podcast “Curious Universe,” about the launch and the excitement at NASA. Then, Ira checks in with two scientists who are working on the mission about what they’re excited to learn: Dr. Ingrid Daubar, planetary scientist at Brown University and a Europa Clipper project staff scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Dr. Tracy Becker, planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute and a deputy principal investigator for the ultraviolet spectrograph on the Europa spacecraft.

Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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