SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launches NASA’s Europa Clipper mission
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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket this morning successfully launched NASA’s Europa Clipper mission on its way to Jupiter, the rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
In order to get the energy to reach Jupiter, none of the Falcon Heavy’s first stage boosters were recovered today. The two side boosters completed their sixth and final flights with this mission, while the core booster completed its first launch. The only parts of the rocket that will be recovered and reused were the two fairing halves.
To get to Jupiter, the spacecraft will make first a fly-by of Mars in February 2025, and then a fly-by of Earth in December 2026. It will arrive in Jupiter orbit in April 2030, where its orbit will be adjusted to fly close past Europa many times in order to study it closely, as shown by the graphic on the right. It will not going into orbit around the planet because that would place it permanently inside the high radiation environment around Jupiter. This is especially important because the spacecraft has installed transistors that were not properly hardened for that environment.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
98 SpaceX
45 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 115 to 68, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 98 to 85.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Click for original image.
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket this morning successfully launched NASA’s Europa Clipper mission on its way to Jupiter, the rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
In order to get the energy to reach Jupiter, none of the Falcon Heavy’s first stage boosters were recovered today. The two side boosters completed their sixth and final flights with this mission, while the core booster completed its first launch. The only parts of the rocket that will be recovered and reused were the two fairing halves.
To get to Jupiter, the spacecraft will make first a fly-by of Mars in February 2025, and then a fly-by of Earth in December 2026. It will arrive in Jupiter orbit in April 2030, where its orbit will be adjusted to fly close past Europa many times in order to study it closely, as shown by the graphic on the right. It will not going into orbit around the planet because that would place it permanently inside the high radiation environment around Jupiter. This is especially important because the spacecraft has installed transistors that were not properly hardened for that environment.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
98 SpaceX
45 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 115 to 68, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 98 to 85.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
“It will not going into orbit around the planet”. Well, yes, it will, “the planet” being Jupiter. It won’t be going into orbit around Europa.
Good spacecraft separation, acquisition of telemetry, start of solar roll! Falcon Heavy… 10 for 10!
What’s really amazing to me is that with all the success SpaceX experienced yesterday with Starship/Superheavy . . .
. . . today is just “Back to Business!!” with another successful launch.
I am delighted that Europa Clipper seems to have had a flawless sendoff; I am also pleased that some news outlets are recognizing the critical, *essential* role that former Rep. John Culberson (R-Houston) played in making this mission possible at all, doing multiple interviews with him. A Europa mission was at the top of the planetary science Decadal Review, but neither the Obama White House nor NASA HQ actually wanted to pursue it, fearing it would be too expensive and crowd out other programs. Culberson had a very rare genuine personal interest in seeing a Europa mission, and made it a personal quest to see it through. Once he was chair of the appropriations committee overseeing NASA, he simply forced enough funding through and made it illegal for NASA HQ to not use the money on it. He lost election in the blue wave year of 2018, in part due to a scurrilous Proxmirian line of attack by his Democratic opponent, accusing him of being more interested in water on other planets than water in the Houston metro area, but by that time, Europa Clipper’s funding wedge was fully secure.
Culberson, fortunately, was on hand at the Cape to see the launch.
See Kenneth Chang’s article in the New York Times today, which is actually not bad: “I’m still walking on Cloud Nine,” he said afterward. “A flawless beginning to a potentially civilization-changing mission.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/science/nasa-europa-clipper-jupiter.html
See also Irene Klotz’s interview in Aviation Week, wherein Culberson denies that he had any vested interest in trying to force Europa Clipper onto SLS for launch: He had only put it into statutory language to obtain the support of Senate Appropriations chairman Richard Shelby. “I was one of the first to advocate taking Clipper off SLS.”
https://aviationweek.com/space/space-exploration/fast-five-europa-clipper-champion-former-us-rep-john-culberson
(This one is paywalled, but I have an image file of the interview if anyone wants it.)
Yesterday and today, October 13 and 14, 2024 may turn out to be immensely consequential days in space exploration. In five or six years, Starships should be ready to leave for Mars, and Europa Clipper should be ready to detect traces of life (or not) near Europa. How we move out into the Solar System could be very heavily influenced by what these vehicles find.
I have often wondered how society would react to the discovery, or non-discovery, of life elsewhere in the Solar System. If life (probably microbial) is discovered, I am afraid it will trigger an “environmentalist” reaction that will seek to impede human expansion. This will be especially likely if it is determined to be of biologically dissimilar to that of Earth!
On the other hand, if other worlds are found to be sterile, it is difficult to imagine the reaction. It certainly would be a sobering turn of events! Of course, absence of evidence is not equivalent to evidence of absence, etc.