More than 200 scientists, engineers, and mission specialists from across the U.S. and around the world are gathering this week at the University of Colorado Boulder to discuss NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, the main science goal of which is to determine whether there are places below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon that could support life.
The Project Science Group (PSG) meeting brings together the full Europa Clipper science and instrument community for intensive planning as the spacecraft continues its journey toward Jupiter’s mysterious moon Europa—which, scientists believe, may harbor a vast ocean of water beneath its icy surface.
“This meeting at CU Boulder is where the science and engineering teams discuss and align on the details that will make the mission fully successful,” said Europa Clipper Project Scientist Robert (Bob) Pappalardo, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and an assistant professor in CU Boulder’s Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Department (APS) from 2001 to 2006. “The steps we take now strengthen our ability to explore Europa with the precision and depth this mission demands.”
Europa Clipper launched from Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 14, 2024, beginning its multi‑year cruise through the inner solar system before it enters orbit at Jupiter in 2030. After completing a Mars gravity assist in early 2025, the spacecraft is now on course for an Earth gravity assist on Dec. 3, 2026. This critical maneuver will allow the spacecraft to borrow a bit of Earth’s orbital energy to redirect and boost it on its long journey from one ocean world to another.
The Earth flyby will serve as an initial rehearsal for the prime mission, which will include nearly 50 close flybys of Europa beginning in 2031. With that milestone approaching, this meeting serves as an essential checkpoint for scientific coordination, instrument readiness, and mission operations planning.
Europa Clipper carries a suite of nine science instruments, including a spectrometer, a spectrograph, a magnetometer, a plasma instrument, and cameras, that will work together to collect data to achieve the mission’s science objectives, and the overarching goal of determining whether Europa hosts conditions suitable for harboring life.
Among the instruments are: the Surface Dust Analyzer (SUDA) instrument built at CU Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and led by Sascha Kempf, a LASP researcher and CU Boulder associate professor of physics; and the Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), led by Philip Christensen of Arizona State University, on which Paul Hayne, a LASP researcher and APS associate professor, is a co-investigator. Hayne was also previously the investigation scientist for E-THEMIS at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 2015 to 2017.
SUDA will measure the composition of dust grains ejected from Europa’s surface, allowing scientists to map organic and inorganic materials across the moon, while E-THEMIS is designed to scan the surface and search for geologically active areas.
“Europa Clipper is an ambitious mission that will fundamentally change our understanding of ocean worlds and the possibility of life beyond Earth,” said Hayne, a member of the meeting’s organizing committee. “LASP is proud to play a crucial role in it and to host the Project Science Group meeting at CU Boulder.”
This meeting’s agenda includes observation planning for the Earth gravity assist, instrument operation discussions, science coordination for the Europa flybys, and cross‑team data and operations planning. These activities will ensure the mission is fully prepared for the orbit insertion and the sequence of flybys that follow.
“The Earth flyby will be our chance to practice the full chain of operations—from planning to data handling—before we reach Jupiter,” said SUDA Deputy Principal Investigator Sean Hsu, who is also a member of the organizing committee. “Meetings like this are where we come together as a team to refine those processes.”
Europa Clipper PSG meeting locations rotate among the institutions of mission co‑investigators, helping strengthen collaboration and interaction across the mission’s distributed science team, which is especially valuable during the cruise phase, Pappalardo said. Once the spacecraft enters its prime mission at Jupiter in 2030, PSG meetings will occur more frequently.
By Sara Pratt, LASP Sr. Communications Specialist
Managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
Founded a decade before NASA, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder (LASP) is revolutionizing human understanding of the cosmos. LASP is deeply committed to inspiring and educating the next generation of space explorers. From the first exploratory rocket measurements of Earth’s upper atmosphere to trailblazing observations of every planet in the solar system, LASP continues to build on its remarkable history with a nearly $1 billion portfolio of new research and engineering programs.
