Europa Clipper Launch Window Extended

NASA is still expecting to launch the Europa Clipper probe on October 10 at the beginning of its multi-week launch window, but if necessary it could launch as late as November 6.  That’s several days beyond the original window thanks to SpaceX finding ways to get more performance out of the Falcon Heavy rocket and not needing to rely on ground stations to track the rocket’s trajectory.

NASA confirmed on September 9 that Europa Clipper is approved for launch despite concerns about whether the transistors are sufficiently radiation-hardened.

The project is managed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL and NASA officials briefed the public on September 17 about preparations for launch and what they hope to learn after the spacecraft reaches Jupiter in 2030 and makes 49 flybys of Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Many scientists believe a liquid ocean exists under Europa’s icy crust.  Where there’s water, there may be life — albeit microbial, not intelligent. The spacecraft will come as close as 25 kilometers (16 miles) from Europa’s surface, studying it with a variety of instruments. One is a radar they hope will reveal the depth of the crust before reaching the liquid ocean underneath.  Other instruments will study chemicals on the surface, some of which may have been deposited by geysers that shoot up from the ocean through cracks in the surface.  Europa Clipper is searching for signs of habitability — whether an environment exists that could support life — not for life itself.

During the briefing, Armando Piloto, NASA’s Launch Service Program Mission Manager, revealed that the launch window, which opens on October 10, was recently extended from October 30 to November 6.  That provides extra time in case of contingencies like bad weather or technical issues with the launch vehicle or ground systems.

Europa Clipper is launching on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, which consists of three Falcon 9 rockets — a core booster plus two strap-ons.

Usually the two side boosters come back to land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station so they can be reused and sometimes the core booster is recovered at sea, but not this time. All their fuel will be used to get Europa Clipper on its way to Jupiter. Piloto said SpaceX “made some hardware modifications that enable the launch vehicle to utilize all the fuel in the boosters,” but couldn’t go into detail about what they are because the information is proprietary.

He added that SpaceX has gained experience in flying this configuration —  it’s the 11th Falcon Heavy launch — and the company has “come up with a strategy to optimize throttling of the launch vehicle to get more performance out of it.”

In addition, data on the rocket’s in-flight performance will come through NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System instead of ground stations. That gives them more trajectory flexibility since the rocket doesn’t have to fly over certain locations on Earth “when you do your burns … and that gave us a lot of additional performance as well. So it’s a combination of factors that allowed us to extend it from the 30th to November 6.”

The launch window each day is instantaneous — either it launches at the prescribed time or it doesn’t. If the launch is scrubbed before the rocket is fueled, they can try again the next day. If it has been fueled, a 48-hour turnaround is needed, Piloto explained.

He is confident they will be ready on October 10. The launch time that day is 12:31 pm ET.  But weather is always a factor, and technical glitches with any rocket launch are not unexpected.  Regardless of which day it launches within the window, it will arrive at Jupiter in April 2030.