Europa Clipper Tests its Star Tracker Navigation System

On October 14th, 2024, NASA's Europa Clipper mission launched atop a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will spend the next few years traveling 2.9 billion km (1.8 billion mi) to reach Jupiter's moon Europa, arriving in April 2030. Once it arrives in the system, the probe will establish orbit and conduct 49 close flybys of this " Ocean World " and search for chemical elements that could indicate the presence of life (biosignatures) in the moon's interior. By July 2031, it will be joined by the ESA's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE), which will conduct a similar search around Callisto and G…