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NASA successfully launches Europa Clipper mission with ASU-designed instrument on board

ASU watch party for Europa Clipper Launch at Marston Exploration Theater.
Greg Hahne/KJZZ
ASU watch party for Europa Clipper Launch at Marston Exploration Theater on Oct. 14, 2024.

On Monday morning, NASA successfully launched its Europa Clipper Mission, which is on its way to one of Jupiter’s moons to see if it is habitable for life.

Arizona State University held a watch party for the mission's launch.

Jupiter’s moon Europa is believed to have twice as much liquid water under its icy surface than all of the Earth’s oceans. That is despite the fact that it is about the size of our own moon.

Arizona State University researchers built one of the nine instruments on board the spacecraft. The so-called E-THEMIS will look for temperature differences on the surface of Europa to see if there are any spots of ice that are thinner than others.

ASU professor David Williams says that will help NASA in the future.

“That would be the place where you'd want to send a lander as a future mission to really investigate the the nature of anything that we might discover there," Williams said. "The thing that makes this moon interesting is that it has an icy crust but a salty liquid water ocean underneath that crust. It's internally heated by tidal heating. And we know that it has some of the ingredients that are necessary for life."

NASA anticipates the mission will arrive at Jupiter in 2030.

Greg Hahne started as a news intern at KJZZ in 2020 and returned as a field correspondent in 2021. He learned his love for radio by joining Arizona State University's Blaze Radio, where he worked on the production team.