Europa Clipper

Students follow NASA's Europa Clipper from its October 14, 2024 launch and 2025 Mars gravity assist toward its planned 2030 arrival at Jupiter, and learn why it will orbit Jupiter and make about 49 flybys of Europa, what its instruments will measure about Europa's ice and ocean, and how it will work alongside ESA's JUICE.

Grades 5-8About 15 minutes of narrated flight, plus discussion stops8 stops

The full guide, with the 40-minute plan, discussion key points, exit ticket, activities, transcript and PDF, comes with a teacher license. Already licensed? Use Open the full guide.

What students will see and do

Students start at Earth for the launch, visit the Europa Clipper spacecraft, fly past Mars for the gravity assist, spend three stops at Jupiter (Europa as a target, why the spacecraft orbits Jupiter instead of Europa, and its instruments), return to Europa Clipper for the message it carries, and end at the JUICE spacecraft. Aetherion pauses for discussion at Earth (why missions take years to prepare), at Jupiter's 'Why Not Orbit Europa?' stop (the radiation tradeoff) and at JUICE (two spacecraft working together).

Learning objectives

• Explain that Europa Clipper's goal is to determine whether Europa could support life, not to detect life directly.
• Describe why the spacecraft orbits Jupiter and makes many short flybys of Europa instead of orbiting Europa.
• Identify at least three things Europa Clipper's instruments will measure, such as ice thickness, surface chemistry and magnetic signals.
• Explain how gravity assists from Mars and Earth help the spacecraft reach Jupiter.

NGSS connections

Stops on this journey

1. Liftoff (discussion stop)
2. A Giant Spacecraft
3. A Boost from Mars
4. Europa, the Target
5. Why Not Orbit Europa? (discussion stop)
6. Reading the Ice
7. A Message on Board
8. A Sibling Mission (discussion stop)

Vocabulary

• habitability
• flyby
• gravity assist
• radiation
• ice-penetrating radar
• magnetometer
• solar array
• plume