NASA is just weeks away from its first mission designed to explore Jupiter’s massive moon Europa. Ahead of the historic launch, the agency started releasing videos on Monday, Sept. 23, offering a behind-the-scenes look at what’s going into the Europa Clipper Mission.
NASA is highlighting the efforts of five engineers each week leading up to the launch window of mission, which is starts on Oct. 10. The engineers are working on the giant spacecraft that will explore Jupiter’s moon in search of a “global saltwater ocean beneath its icy shell.”
The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter, and it will collect data with nine instruments and conduct an experiment using telecommunications to gather gravity data on the unforgiving radiation environment of Jupiter.
The length of a basketball court, the Europe Probe is the largest spacecraft ever to be developed for a planetary mission. If NASA finds that Europa is a habitable world, a second Europa mission will return, this time landing there to further study signs of life.
“At the time of launch, I will have been working on the Europa Clipper for a dozen years,” said Dipak Srinivasan, the lead communications systems engineer. “You know, seeing it from its infancy, literal napkin designs of what this spacecraft could look like, to actual realized hardware, to get it on its journey to Europa. It’s just going to be a wonderful feeling.”
