- Europa Clipper’s Scientific Objective
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission aims to investigate whether there are habitable environments beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Its primary goal is to determine the potential for life on this intriguing celestial body.
- “Message in a Bottle” Campaign
As part of the campaign, NASA invites the public to send their names and a dedicated poem to accompany the Europa Clipper mission. These names and the poem will be engraved onto a microchip, serving as a symbolic message in a bottle that will travel billions of miles to Jupiter’s moon.
- Sending Your Name and Poem
Participants can submit their names until December 31 of this year. NASA will stencil the names onto a microchip along with the poem written by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, titled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.” The website allows users to sign the poem with their name and download a customizable souvenir illustrating their name on a message in a bottle against a backdrop of Europa and Jupiter.
4. Assembly of Europa Clipper
The Europa Clipper spacecraft is currently being assembled at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and will embark on a 1.8 billion-mile (2.6 billion-kilometer) journey to the Jupiter system, with an estimated arrival in 2030. Throughout its mission, it will fly by Europa approximately 50 times, gathering valuable data on the subsurface ocean, ice crust, and atmosphere.
