NASA’s Europa Clipper launched on **Oct 14, 2024** atop a Falcon Heavy and is currently en route to Jupiter. The spacecraft performed a **Mars gravity assist on Mar 1, 2025**, will swing by **Earth in Dec 2026**, and is slated to **enter Jupiter orbit in April 2030**, then conduct **\~ 49 close flybys of Europa**.
Europa Clipper is designed to assess whether Jupiter’s moon Europa could support life, using ice-penetrating radar, magnetometry and gravity science, plus cameras and spectrometers.
Optimistically, Europa Clipper could map ice-shell thickness and structure, confirm a global salty ocean with estimates of salinity, spot fresh surface salts and organics along young fractures, sample and characterize any active plumes, and pinpoint prime landing zones where ocean–surface exchange has been recent.
# Arrives Arrives at Jupiter April 2030; begins ~**49** close flybys of Europa through the early **2030s**.
# End of mission
The probe is scheduled to be crashed into Jupiter, Ganymede, or Callisto, to prevent it from crashing into Europa.
In June 2022, lead project scientist Robert Pappalardo revealed that mission planners for Europa Clipper were considering disposing of the probe by crashing it into the surface of Ganymede in case an extended mission was not approved early in the main science phase. He noted that an impact would help the ESA's Juice mission collect more information about Ganymede's surface chemistry.
# Full Tour Summary - **Cruise:** launched **Oct 14, 2024**; **Mars gravity assist Mar 1, 2025**; **Earth gravity assist Dec 3, 2026**; **Jupiter arrival Apr 2030**. - **Destinations:** Europa flybys while in elongated orbit around **Jupiter** (trajectory retargeted between encounters). - **Goal:** determine whether Europa has conditions suitable for life (ice shell, ocean, composition, activity, habitability).
# Sources - Europa Clipper — **Mission overview & timeline** — nasa.gov - JPL News — **Mars gravity assist & en-route updates** — jpl.nasa.gov - Europa Clipper — **Wikipedia summary** — wikipedia.org # See - JUICE to Jupiter