Scientific American
Meet the Unsung Heroes behind Humanity’s Improbable Journey to an Alien Ocean
The author of a new book reveals the hidden human history of NASA’s in-development Europa Clipper mission
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Artist’s concept of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission at Jupiter’s moon. Credit: NASA and JPL-Caltech
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Recent headlines aside, NASA’s most exciting interplanetary mission for the early 21st century is arguably not a robot named Perseverance presently roving around Mars gathering samples for a future return to Earth. Instead it is a spacecraft, just now on the verge of being built, that could launch later this decade to Europa, an enigmatic moon of Jupiter that boasts an enormous ocean bigger than all of Earth’s oceans combined beneath an icy crust. Called Europa Clipper, the mission could lift off as soon as 2024 to study the moon’s subsurface abyss with the goal of gauging its potential habitability and the distinct possibility of discovering a
John B Slaughter - A fearless first
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Rocket launches reveal water vapor effect in upper atmosphere
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