NASA’s Europa Clipper, a mission set to probe Jupiter’s icy moon, will no longer launch on Thursday due to a Category 5 hurricane making its way towards Florida.
The spacecraft’s launch window opens October 10 and remains open until November 6. The Europa Clipper was supposed to launch on the 10th, but the unexpected rapid development of Hurricane Milton means the launch is officially postponed. In a release, NASA stated that the probe and the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket which will launch it into space are safely secured in a Kennedy Space Center hangar. NASA did not immediately state a revised launch date for the spacecraft.
Hurricane Milton is currently north of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, charting a northeasterly course towards Tampa, Florida. The storm rapidly increased in intensity; it only became a hurricane yesterday and it ramped up from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 storm in about seven hours. That intensification pace puts the storm behind only Hurricane Wilma (2005) and Hurricane Felix (2007) in the record books.
Category 5 storms are the most intense on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, which classifies storms based on wind speed. A Category 5 storm is one with winds greater than 157 miles per hour (253 kilometers per hour). You can learn more about Hurricane Milton here.
Not yet airborne, the Europa Clipper can’t seem to catch a break. The mission, which will cost about $5.2 billion at the end of its lifecycle, suffered a setback in July when engineers realized parts of the spacecraft weren’t equipped to handle the intense radiation in the Jovian system. Specifically, transistors which help electrical flow in the spacecraft needed to undergo further testing to confirm they would continue to function in the face of charged particles flying around Jupiter and its moons.
The probe was finally cleared for launch on September 10, a month to the day from the spacecraft’s projected launch. Of course the team did not expect a Category 5 storm to be headed towards Florida, but such is the price of doing business in a peninsular state that has the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.
“The safety of launch team personnel is our highest priority, and all precautions will be taken to protect the Europa Clipper spacecraft,” said Tim Dunn, senior launch director at NASA’s Launch Services Program, in the NASA release. “Once we have the ‘all-clear’ followed by facility assessment and any recovery actions, we will determine the next launch opportunity for this NASA flagship mission.”
Kennedy Space Center announced on social media this afternoon that the facility is still open, but is in a HURCON III status, its hurricane preparedness status that involves securing facilities, property, and equipment 48 hours prior to sustained 50-knot winds.
Meanwhile, Milton has also interrupted suborbital flights; the Tampa International Airport and St. Pete-Clearwater International Airports announced they would close tomorrow, in anticipation of the storm’s landfall.
The October 10 launch window has been scrapped on the mission’s website, which outlines one three-hour launch window per day through the end of the month. Should it launch in that window, the Europa Clipper is slated to reach the Jovian system in April 2030. It will make 80 orbits of Jupiter and 49 flybys of Europa, which is thought to contain a salty water ocean under its icy crust, making it a compelling venue for astrobiology: the study of life beyond Earth.