Europa Clipper is headed to Mars
This extended travel time, while seemingly long, is a carefully calculated necessity driven by several key factors.
Nasa's Europa Clipper mission, which launched on October 14, 2024, is on a six-year journey to reach its destination: Jupiter's intriguing moon Europa.
This extended travel time, while seemingly long, is a carefully calculated necessity driven by several key factors.
The mission's primary objective is to investigate Europa's potential habitability, focusing on its subsurface ocean and icy crust. To achieve this, the spacecraft must navigate the vast distance between Earth and Jupiter, which is approximately 779 million kilometres at its closest approach.
However, the spacecraft will have to cover 2-.9 billion kilometres to reach its target. The lengthy travel time is primarily due to the mission's chosen trajectory.
Europa Clipper will employ a Mars-Earth Gravity Assist (MEGA) trajectory, a complex path that utilises the gravitational fields of Mars and Earth to gain the necessary velocity for its journey to Jupiter.