Day: March 7, 2017

After a long process of gaining sufficient approval to be budgeted for a design phase, NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft gets a name and a preliminary shape, but no completion date or launch window any more specific than “the 2020s”, likely putting it at Jupiter’s intriguing moon Europa in the early 2030s after a series of gravity assists. Europa Clipper is intended to closely survey Europa from orbit, attempting to focus on its icy surface and the saltwater ocean believed to be hidden beneath that surface.