NASA and SpaceX Cancel Europa Clipper Mission Due to Hurricane Milton

TapTechNews October 7th news, NASA posted a blog stating that due to Hurricane Milton, NASA and SpaceX decided to cancel the launch attempt of the Europa Clipper mission originally scheduled for Thursday, October 10th.

The launch team has stored NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft in the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to deal with the severe weather, and the space center started hurricane preparedness work on Sunday.

Tim Dunn, the senior launch director of NASA's Launch Services Program, said: The safety of the launch team members is our highest priority, and all preventive measures will be taken to protect the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

The Europa Clipper is listed by NASA as a flagship-class mission, costing 5 billion US dollars (TapTechNews note: currently about 35.283 billion Chinese yuan), and is planned to fly to Europa (Europa, a moon of Jupiter), to look for signs whether this moon is suitable for the existence of life (Europa has been identified by scientists as one of the locations in the solar system that may contain microbial extraterrestrial life).

NASA expects the spacecraft to arrive in April 2030, but its orbit is not around Europa, but around Jupiter. The Europa Clipper will continue the eight-year study done by the Galileo probe, and the data detected by the previous Galileo probe indicates that there is an underground ocean under the ice layer of Europa.