NASA delays Europa Clipper launch to Jupiter to Oct. 14 amid post-hurricane checks

NASA has postponed the launch of its next flagship mission to Jupiter by at least another day as the agency and SpaceX conduct additional checks to ensure the spacecraft is ready to fly after Hurricane Milton battered its Florida launch site.

The mission, called Europa Clipper, is now targeted to launch to Jupiter's icy moon Europa no earlier than Monday (Oct. 14) atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The launch has been delayed since Oct. 10, first to Oct. 13 as Hurricane Milton approached Florida on Wednesday, and now another day due to additional checks in the storm's wake.

"Following Hurricane Milton, teams are continuing to do checkouts to ensure flight readiness," NASA wrote in an update late Friday (Oct. 11). The storm hammered Florida on Wednesday and Thursday. NASA and SpaceX have until Nov. 2 to launch Europa Clipper in the current planetary window, mission managers have said.

Europa Clipper is a $5 billion mission to explore Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa, a world known to harbor vast plumes of water geysers that may contain a subsurface salty ocean with more water than all of Earth's oceans. The moon is one of the most promising places to seek out signs of alien life. 

Mission scientists hope to use Europa Clipper to determine exactly how habitable Europa's ocean may be beneath the moon's thick ice shell. It carries a suite of instruments to measure the moon's gravitational field, interactions with Jupiter, and a radar that can peer through Europa's ice into the ocean below, amid other instruments like cameras and dust analyzers to study the moon's thin exosphere. If all goes well, Europa Clipper will arrive at Europa on April 11, 2030.

But first, Europa Clipper needs to get off the ground and that will depend on conditions at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) near Cape Canaveral, Florida, which was damaged by Hurricane Milton. An early assessment found minor damage to the center, NASA officials said. 

"The Damage Assessment and Recovery Team has completed their assessment of the center and its facilities, and determined that employees can safely return on-site to resume working," KSC officials wrote Friday evening on X (formerly Twitter). "The damage identified is manageable and in-line with the items the Ride Out Teams previously identified, including minor impacts such as ripped awning, and damage to doors and traffic lights."

Photographs released by KSC officials showed damage to a building exterior and an overturned flatbed truck trailer.

NASA and SpaceX have not released a target launch time for the Europa Clipper mission, but a list of launch windows for the mission states an Oct. 14 liftoff would occur at 12:06 p.m. EDT (1606 GMT). The liftoff time moves a few minutes earlier each day as the mission moves later into its launch window.

NASA and SpaceX will livestream the launch of Europa Clipper on Oct. 14, with a webcast that likely begins well before launch time. You'll be able to watch the Europa Clipper launch live on Space.com once a final date and time are set.