After an exhaustive review of suspect transistors in NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, NASA managers have cleared the probe for launch next month as planned on a $5.2 billion mission to find out if a suspected sub-surface ocean on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is a habitable environment.

The transistor issue cropped up in May, raising fears the scope of the Clipper’s mission might have to be reduced or the flight delayed for costly repairs.

But the review showed the transistors in question will, in effect, heal themselves during the 20 days between the high radiation doses the probe will receive during each of 49 close flybys of Europa, all of them deep in Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field and radiation environment.

In addition, onboard heaters can be used as needed to raise the temperature of affected transistors, improving the recovery process.

“After extensive testing and analysis of the transistors, the Europa Clipper project and I personally have high confidence we can complete the original mission for exploring Europa as planned,” said Jordan Evans, Europa Clipper project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The solar-powered Europa Clipper, one of NASA’s most ambitious planetary probes, is a “flagship” mission designed to make multiple close flybys of Europa to learn whether a subsurface salt water ocean beneath the frozen world’s icy crust could host a habitable environment.

If habitability can be confirmed, “just think of what that means, that there are two places in one solar system that have all the ingredients for life that are habitable right now at the same time,” said Curt Niebur, Europa Clipper program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

“Think of what that means when you extend that result to the billions and billions of other solar systems in this galaxy. Setting aside the ‘is there life?’ question on Europa, just the habitability question in and of itself opens up a huge new paradigm for searching for life in the galaxy.”

Discovered in 1610 by Galileo, Europa has been studied by NASA’s Voyager probes and, much more extensively, by the agency’s aptly-named Galileo orbiter in the 1990s, which made a dozen close flybys.

The spacecraft discovered that Jupiter’s magnetic field was disrupted around Europa, implying an electrically conductive fluid deep within the moon. Given Europa’s frozen crust, the most likely explanation is a sub-surface salt water ocean, kept warm by tidal flexing, the repetitive squeezing by Jupiter’s enormous gravity as the moon swings through its orbit.

The Europa Clipper is not designed to search for signs of life on or below Europa’s crust. But confirming the presence of a hidden sea and determining its habitability would be a major step forward in the search for places in the solar system and beyond where life, as currently defined, could exist.

“This is an epic mission,” Niebur said. “It’s a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today, right now,”

“A chance to do the first exploration of this new kind of world that we’ve discovered very recently called an ocean world, that is just totally immersed and covered in a liquid water ocean, completely unlike anything we’ve seen before. That’s what Europa Clipper and her team are going to unveil for us.”

Scheduled for launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 10 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, the spacecraft will first fly past Mars in February, using the red planet’s gravity to send it toward another velocity-boosting flyby of Earth in December 2026.

Only then will the Europa Clipper be traveling fast enough to head out into deep space on a trajectory to Jupiter. Even so, the probe won’t reach its target until April 2030, using its thrusters to brake into an initial orbit around the giant planet.

Five months later, the first in a series of close flybys of several moons will be needed to set up the first close encounter with Europa in the spring of 2031. During two science campaigns running through 2034, at least 49 close flybys of Europa are planned, including passes as low as 16 miles above the moon’s frozen surface.

The mission was progressing toward launch when engineers were alerted in May to a potentially serious problem with transistors used throughout the spacecraft. Similar components were found to fail at lower radiation doses than expected.

The radiation environment around Jupiter is powered by the planet’s titanic magnetic field, which traps and accelerates electrically charged particles from the solar wind and the volcanic moon Io. The radiation environment in the vicinity of Europa would kill an unprotected astronaut in a matter of hours.

As a result, Europa’s flight computer and other key components are protected in a radiation-resistant “vault.” Radiation “hardened” components are used throughout the spacecraft. But test data from the manufacturer showed similar components were failing at lower radiation levels than the Europa Clipper will experience.

But after months of testing, engineers concluded the spacecraft can complete its mission with no major modifications.

“We completed extensive testing to validate the transistors on the spacecraft,” Evans said. “We ran tests 24 hours a day over the last four months at multiple locations. We simulated flight-like conditions to illuminate any issues that the transistors might have over our four-year science mission across the variety of applications we have on the spacecraft.

“We put these representative transistors into these environments, irradiated entire circuits to see how the system behaves. … We replicated that transistor self-healing, or annealing as it’s called, that occurs by heating them to room temperature while they, essentially, (are out of) that intense radiation environment as we go around each orbit.”

Based on the results, he said, “we’re ready for our final launch preparations and reviews. We are ready for Europa.”

Officials in Springfield, Ohio, said Monday they have not received any credible reports of Haitian immigrants abducting and eating pets, despite viral claims on social media that have been amplified by Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance and others. 

References to the claim, which allege Haitian migrants have been eating cats, as well as ducks and geese, have garnered millions of views on X, with Vance’s X post racking up 4 million views alone, as of Monday evening. Vance, the Republican senator for Ohio, said he had previously raised the issue of Haitian immigrants “causing chaos all over Springfield,” adding, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

The House Judiciary GOP, Sen. Ted Cruz and Elon Musk, the owner of X, also posted about the claim on Monday. Cruz, a Texas Republican, posted a meme on X showing two cats holding each other, with text that reads “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us.” 

But the city’s spokesperson told CBS News there have been “no credible reports or specific claims” of pets being harmed by migrants. 

“In response to recent rumors alleging criminal activity by the immigrant population in our city, we wish to clarify that there have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” said Karen Graves, strategic engagement manager for Springfield.

The claim

While it’s not possible to say where the claim originated, the Springfield News-Sun reported that it may be linked to a viral post in a Springfield Facebook group. 

In the Facebook post, a person says a neighbor’s daughter’s friend lost her cat and later found it hanging from a branch near a Haitian neighbor’s house, according to the Springfield News-Sun. Screenshots of the post have been circulating on X and other platforms, racking up thousands of likes and views. 

The post appears to be in a private Facebook group; CBS News has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the post. 

Some social media users shared body camera footage of an unrelated incident in which an Ohio woman was accused of killing and eating a cat in Canton, a city more than 170 miles away from Springfield. Public records indicate the woman in the footage, Allexis Telia Ferrell, is not a migrant and has lived in Ohio for at least 18 years. 

Social media users are also sharing AI images in connection with the claim about Haitian migrants. One AI-created image shows Trump holding a cat in each arm, running through a crowd of Black people. The caption reads: “The kittens of Springfield have only one hope.” 

Springfield, a city of just under 58,000 people, has seen a large increase in migrants arriving in the last several years. 

There are an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 migrants in Ohio’s Clark County, with more than 10,000 coming from Haiti, according to local officials. The Springfield-based Haitian Community Help and Support Center was established in 2023 to help assist migrants, especially Haitains, arriving in Clark County. 

In addition to dispelling rumors about harm to pets, the city’s spokesperson said there were no confirmed instances of migrants squatting, littering or deliberately disrupting traffic. 

Washington — Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in a tight race in three key battleground states heading into their first debate on Tuesday, but Harris leads in a couple of areas. One is the “excitement factor”: Democrats in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are more excited about what they’ve seen from Harris’ campaign recently than Republicans are about what they’ve seen from Trump’s, according to a new CBS News poll.

Eighty-nine percent of Democrats in Michigan, 82% in Pennsylvania and 87% in Wisconsin say they’re excited by Harris campaign. By comparison, among Republicans, 78% said the same of Trump in Michigan, 75% in Pennsylvania and 76% in Wisconsin. 

The changes at the top of the Democratic ticket that followed President Biden’s departure from the campaign in July upended the race just months to go before Election Day, as Democrats are trying to continue to capitalize on any momentum and sustain excitement heading toward November. 

Now, Democrats in the three battleground states are also just as likely as Republicans to say they will definitely vote, as Harris has consolidated the votes among the party’s base. But Trump leads in the states among some key issues, including the economy and inflation.

In a national survey conducted before Harris formally accepted the nomination last month, most Democrats were excited about the vice president, and more Democrats said they would vote since she became the nominee. Her campaign also announced huge fundraising numbers, $540 million for August, nearly triple what Trump raised. But whether Harris can sustain the excitement and channel it into a lead in the battleground states remains to be seen. 

One measure that’s very different since Mr. Biden and Trump faced off in June is that now it’s Harris who’s seen by more as having the cognitive and mental health to serve, and Trump comparatively less so. In Michigan, 64% say she has the cognitive and mental health to serve, compared with 47% for Trump. In Pennsylvania, it’s Harris with 64% again on this question and 49% for Trump. And in Wisconsin, Harris has her widest margin on Trump on this question, 68% to 48%. This was very different in CBS News’ national polling conducted when Mr. Biden was still running: 35% of registered voters thought he had the cognitive and mental health to serve, and 50% thought Trump did. 

Earlier this month, the Harris campaign worked to tamp down expectations, saying that while “Americans are energized behind that message,” citing fundraising success, volunteer interests and a “spike in enthusiasm,” the fight ahead is a serious one. 

“Make no mistake,” Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a memo. “We head into the final stretch of this race as the clear underdogs.”

contributed to this report.