Europa

Europa Clipper Astrobiology Probe Undergoes High Gain Antenna Installation

By Keith Cowing
Status Report
NASA
July 10, 2024
Filed under , , , ,
Europa Clipper Astrobiology Probe Undergoes High Gain Antenna Installation
Europa Clipper High Gain Antenna Installation — NASA Date Created:2024-06-18 larger image

Technicians prepare to install the nearly 10 feet (3 meters) wide dish-shaped high-gain antenna to NASA’s Europa Clipper, a spacecraft to study Jupiter’s icy moon, at the agency’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, June 18, 2024.

The spacecraft will perform a series of flybys of the Jupiter moon Europa to gather data on its atmosphere, icy crust, and the ocean underneath, and the high-gain antenna will send the research data to scientists on Earth to determine if the moon can support habitable condition.

The Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A no earlier than October 2024.

Astrobiology

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻