NASA Interview Opportunity: NASA’s Europa Clipper is Ready for Launch to Jupiter’s Moon Europa

Quick Summary
NASA’s Europa Clipper is slated to launch soon from Kennedy Space Center, FL
Europa Clipper will make the first detailed study of Jupiter’s moon Europa
The mission’s main goal: to determine if Europa has the conditions to support life
Evidence points to a vast ocean of liquid water just below Europa’s icy surface
The spacecraft is massive! With the solar arrays fully deployed it’ll be the size of a basketball court

Soon NASA will launch its largest interplanetary spacecraft, EUROPA CLIPPER, to conduct the first-ever detailed survey of Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter that is one of the most promising places in our solar system to search for life beyond Earth. From the outside Europa looks like a ball of ice, but there’s strong scientific evidence that an ocean of liquid salt water, containing twice as much water as there is on Earth, lies just beneath the moon’s icy crust.

The spacecraft is not looking for life directly, but rather to determine if Europa has the ingredients to support life: liquid water, an energy source and the chemical building blocks like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur.

Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter and make multiple flybys of Europa gathering detailed information about this intriguing world from the top of its atmosphere to its rocky surface. Equipped with nine scientific instruments and a gravity experiment, Europa Clipper will explore the moon’s interior, composition and geology.

Suggested Anchor Intro
[Insert day] NASA is launching the largest spacecraft ever built for a planetary mission. Europa Clipper is headed to Jupiter’s moon Europa where evidence points to a vast ocean of liquid water under its icy shell. But does it have the other ingredients necessary to support life as we know it?

Joining us now is NASA/mission expert XX to tell us more about this exciting mission….

Suggested Questions:
1. [Insert day] is an exciting day! Can you tell us about this new mission, Europa Clipper, which will look at Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa?
2. Jupiter has 95 moons, why are scientists interested in this specific moon, Europa? What are we hoping to learn?
3. Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission. Can you tell us more about this spacecraft?
4. The search for life beyond Earth is a growing field of study for NASA. How does this mission fit into the larger field of astrobiology and the search for life?
5. What excites you most about this mission?
6. Where can we learn more and keep up to date with this exciting mission?

Questions for longer interviews:
7. Other missions are studying the moon Europa. How is the Europa Clipper spacecraft expected to add to our knowledge about this moon?
8. Why will the Europa Clipper spacecraft orbit Jupiter instead of Europa?
9. What kind of instruments will the Clipper spacecraft use to study Europa?
10. Can you talk more about the harsh radiation environment that the spacecraft is going up against, and how those instruments will be protected?
11. Europa Clipper is doing a twist on the Earthly practice of sending a message in a bottle out into the ocean. Can you tell me what kind of message in a bottle the spacecraft is carrying out into the cosmic ocean?

See the following sources:

• https://europa.nasa.gov/
• https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/
• https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/press-kits/europa-clipper/