NASA's Europa Clipper will fly close to Mars today on way to Jupiter's icy moon

image via Space.com

March 1, 2025, 11:01 AM

• •NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will fly past Mars on March 1
• •The maneuver is designed to adjust the spacecraft's trajectory and position it for a critical phase in its 1.8-billion-mile trek to the Jupiter system
• •The spacecraft will reach its closest point to Mars at 12:57 p.m. EST (1757 GMT), traveling at speeds of approximately 15.2 miles per second (24.5 kilometers per second)

NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will fly past Mars on March 1, 2024. This maneuver is designed to adjust the spacecraft's trajectory and position it for a critical phase in its 1.8-billion-mile (2.9-billion-kilometer) trek to the Jupiter system. The probe's destination is Europa, a moon of Jupiter coated with a shell of ice that conceals a vast, presumably salty ocean. Scientists suspect the moon could have the ingredients needed for life as we know it, and the $5.2 billion Europa Clipper is NASA's first mission dedicated to gathering data that will help scientists determine whether Europa, and other ocean worlds like it, could indeed be habitable.

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