# Europa Clipper

*Spacecraft*

The largest spacecraft NASA has sent to another planet, on its way to Jupiter to make some fifty close passes over Europa - a moon with a salt-water ocean under its ice holding perhaps twice the water of every ocean on Earth. It is not looking for life, but for whether the place could support it. It arrives in 2030.

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Agency | NASA |
| Launched | 2024-10-14 - still working |
| From the Sun | 153,606,536 km (-987,429 km/d) |
| From the Earth | 88,035,343 km (-511,332 km/d) |
| A signal takes | 5 min |
| Travelling at | 34.2 km/s |

Distances and speed are computed from JPL Horizons trajectories and are true of 2026-09-05, changing at the rate given beside each. The interpolation itself is good to a few kilometres; what ages these figures is the date, not the arithmetic.

## Path

A cruise rather than an orbit: a long fall round the Sun shaped by a Mars flyby behind it and an Earth flyby ahead, which ends when Jupiter captures it in 2030.

## Along the way

- 2025-03-01 — Mars flyby, for the speed to reach Jupiter

## Elsewhere

- On the live map: https://www.orbitalmap.space/?world=solar-system&focus=europa-clipper
- The mission's own page: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/
- This object as a page: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/europa-clipper/
- Every object: https://www.orbitalmap.space/o/
- What this site is and what it reads: https://www.orbitalmap.space/llms.txt