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$5.2 billion NASA probe to assess habitability of sub-surface ocean on moon of Jupiter
One day after launching a Starship rocket on a dramatic test flight in Texas, SpaceX readied a Falcon Heavy rocket for launch Monday from Florida to send a $5.2 billion NASA probe on a 1.8-billion-mile voyage to Jupiter to find out if one of its moons hosts a habitable sub-surface ocean.
If all goes well, the Europa Clipper will brake into orbit around Jupiter in April 2030, setting up 49 close flybys of the frigid moon Europa, an ice covered world with an interior warmed by the relentless squeezing of Jupiter’s gravity as it swings around the giant planet in a slightly elliptical orbit.
NASA
Data from previous missions and long-range studies from Earth indicate a vast salt-water ocean lurks beneath the moon’s frozen crust, providing a possibly habitable environment. Whether microbial life exists in that ocean is unknown, but the Europa Clipper’s instruments will try to find out if it’s at least possible.
“Europa is an ice covered moon of Jupiter, about the size of Earth’s moon, but believed to have a global subsurface ocean that contains more than twice the water of all of Earth’s oceans combined,” said Project Scientist Robert Pappalardo.
“We want to determine whether Europa has the potential to support simple life in the deep ocean, beneath its icy layer,” he said. “We want to understand whether Europa has the key ingredients to support life in its ocean, the right chemical elements and an energy source for life.”
NASA originally planned to launch the Clipper last week, but mission managers ordered a delay to avoid Hurricane Milton, which swept across Cape Canaveral on Thursday. An additional one-day slip was ordered to resolve a technical issue and while details were not provided, the rocket was cleared for launch.
Liftoff from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center was targeted for 12:06 p.m. EDT Monday. Generating more than 5 million pounds of thrust, the triple-core Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the SpaceX inventory, will boost the 12,800-pound Europa Clipper to the velocity needed to break free of Earth’s gravity.
While SpaceX normally recovers first stage boosters for refurbishment and reuse, all three core boosters and the rocket’s second stage will use all of their propellants to accelerate the Clipper to the required Earth-departure velocity. As such, no first stage recoveries are possible.
“Falcon Heavy is giving Europa Clipper its all, sending the spacecraft to the farthest destination we’ve ever sent, which means the mission requires the maximum performance. So we won’t be recovering the boosters,” said Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX director of NASA science missions.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t think of a better mission to sacrifice boosters for where we might have an opportunity to discover life in our own solar system.”
To get to Jupiter, the Clipper will first fly past Mars on March 1, using the red planet’s gravity to boost its speed and bend the trajectory to send the probe back toward Earth for another gravity-assist flyby in December 2026. That will finally put the Clipper on course for Jupiter.
NASA
If all goes well, the probe will brake into orbit around Jupiter on April 11, 2030, using the gravity of the moon Ganymede to slow down before a six- to seven-hour firing of the probe’s thrusters. The first of 49 planned flybys of Europa, some as low as 16 miles above the surface, will begin in early 2031.
The mission is expected to last at least three years with the possibility of an extension depending on the spacecraft’s health.
In either case, the Clipper will end its voyage with a kamikaze descent to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede to prevent any chance of a future uncontrolled crash on Europa that might bring earthly microbes to the moon and its possibly habitable sub-surface environment.
“The spacecraft faces some big challenges,” Pappalardo said. “The distance of Jupiter is five times farther from the sun than the Earth is. That means it’s very cold out there, and there’s only faint sunlight to power the solar arrays. So they’re huge.”
Once deployed, the 13.5-foot-wide solar arrays will stretch more than 100 feet from end to end — more than the length of a basketball court — with two radar antennas extending 58 feet from each array.
Power requirements aside, Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field “acts like a giant particle accelerator at Europa,” he said. “A human would receive a lethal dose of radiation in just a few minutes to a few hours, if exposed to that environment.”
The Clipper was designed to withstand repeated doses of extreme radiation while making close flybys of Europa, housing its flight computer and other especially sensitive gear inside a vault shielded by sheets of aluminum-zinc alloy.
But engineers were dismayed to discover earlier this year that critical electrical components used throughout the spacecraft failed at lower levels of radiation than expected.
Engineers and managers held a major review to determine how that might affect the Clipper and eventually concluded the spacecraft could minimize radiation-induced degradation by slightly changing the way the flybys are executed. The only alternative was to delay the launch for several years to replace the suspect components.
Mission scientists were eager to finally get the long-awaited mission underway.
“What would be the greatest outcome? To me, it would be to find some sort of oasis, if you like, on Europa where there’s evidence of liquid water not far below the surface, evidence of organics on the surface,” Pappalardo said. “In the future, maybe NASA could send a lander to scoop down below the surface and literally search for signs of life.”
NASA
As for what sort of life might be possible below the moon’s frozen surface, “we’re really talking simple, like single-celled organisms,” he said. “We don’t expect a lot of energy for life in Europa’s ocean like we do here on the surface of Earth.
“So we don’t expect fishes and whales and that kind of thing,” he added. “But we’re interested in could Europa support simple life, single-celled organisms?”
The Clipper is equipped with nine state-of-the-art instruments, including narrow- and wide-angle visible light cameras that will map about 90% of Europa’s surface, imaging details down to the size of a car. An infrared camera that will look for warmer regions where water may be closer to the surface or even spewing into space.
“The cameras will observe over 90% of Europa’s surface at a resolution of less than 100 meters to a pixel, or 325 feet,” said Cynthia Phillips, a project staff scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “That’s about the size of a city block.
“The narrow-angle camera will be able to take pictures at a resolution as high as half a meter per pixel. That’s about 1.6 feet. And so it will be able to see car-sized objects on the surface of Europa.”
Two spectrometers will study surface chemistry and the composition of the moon’s ultra-thin atmosphere, on the lookout for signs of water plumes and other ocean-driven features. Two magnetometers will probe the sub-surface ocean by studying electrical currents induced by Jupiter’s magnetic field.
An ice-penetrating radar will “see” up to 19 miles beneath the icy crust to look for pockets of water in the ice and helping scientists understand how the ice and water interact with the presumed ocean.
“Those signals will penetrate through into the subsurface, where they may be able to bounce off a liquid water layer, such as a lake within the icy shell, or maybe even penetrate all the way through, depending on how thick the surface ice layer is and other factors, such as its structure and composition,” Phillips said.
“The radar could be able to penetrate as deep as 30 kilometers. That’s about 19 miles below the surface.”
Two other instruments will study gas and dust particles on the surface and suspended in the atmosphere to analyze their chemical makeup. Finally, scientists will measure tiny changes in the probe’s trajectory, allowing them to glean details about Europa’s internal structure.
“We know of our Earth as an ocean world, but Europa is representative of a new class of ocean worlds, icy worlds in the distant outer solar system where saltwater oceans might exist under their icy surfaces,” Pappalardo said. “In fact, icy ocean worlds could be the most common habitat for life, not just in our solar system, but throughout the universe.
“Europa Clipper will, for the first time, explore such a world in depth. … We’re at the threshold of a new era of exploration. We’ve been working on this mission for so long. We’re going to learn how common or rare habitable icy worlds may be.”
A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. Over the course of her trial, Pelicot — who insisted her full name be published and proceedings be made public — has been praised for her courage and become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France and around the world. The judge on Thursday was reading out verdicts for dozens of other men also accused of raping her.
Pelicot arrived Thursday at the court in Avignon, southeast France, where crowds had gathered outside holding signs saying: “Thank you for your courage.”
The trial began on Sept. 2, and almost every day, Pelicot came face to face with her former husband, Dominique, or one of the 49 other men charged with raping her. One other man faced a charge of aggravated sexual assault. She insisted that videos submitted as evidence, made by her ex-husband showing men sexually assaulting her while she appeared to be unconscious, be shown in open court.
The assaults took place between 2011 and 2020, when Dominique Pelicot was taken into custody. Police found thousands of photos and videos of the abuse on his computer drives, which helped lead them to other suspects. Some of the men testified they thought the unconscious woman was OK with it, or that her husband’s permission was enough.
“Gisèle Pelicot thinks that this shock wave is necessary, so that no one can say after this: ‘I didn’t know this was rape,'” her attorney, Stéphane Babonneau, told The Associated Press.
“It’s not for us to feel shame — it’s for them,” Pelicot said in court, referring to the attackers. “Above all, I’m expressing my will and determination to change this society.”
Controversial French laws
Pelicot’s case triggered protests across France, and there was hope among some demonstrators that the case could lead to changes in controversial French laws governing sexual consent.
France introduced a legal age of sexual consent in 2021 after a public outcry over the rape of an 11-year-old schoolgirl by a man who was initially convicted on a lesser charge. Since then, sex with anyone under the age of 15 has been viewed as non-consensual, but French law does not refer to consent in cases involving older victims.
Under French law, rape is defined as penetration or oral sex using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise,” without taking consent into account, according to the Reuters news agency. Prosecutors must, therefore, prove an intention to rape if they are to be successful in court, legal experts told Reuters.
Just 14% of rape accusations in France lead to formal investigations, according to a study by the Institute of Public Policies.
“Why don’t we manage to obtain convictions? The first reason is the law,” legal expert Catherine Le Magueresse told Reuters. “The law is written in such a way that victims must comply with the stereotype of a ‘good victim’ and a ‘true rape’: an unknown attacker, use of violence, and the victim’s resistance. But it is only true for a minority of rapes.”
“I’m trying to understand”
Speaking in court during the trial, Pelicot, who is 72, talked about how she had thought she was in a loving marriage with her husband and would never have guessed that he was drugging her.
“We would have a glass of white wine together. I never found anything strange about my potatoes,” Pelicot told the court.
“We finished eating. Often when it’s a football match on TV, I’d let him watch it alone. He brought my ice cream to my bed, where I was. My favorite flavor — raspberry — and I thought: ‘How lucky I am. He’s a love.'”
She said she didn’t have any sensation of being drugged.
“I never felt my heart flutter. I didn’t feel anything. I must have gone under very quickly. I would wake up with my pajamas on,” Pelicot told the court, adding that she would sometimes wake up “more tired than usual, but I walk a lot and thought it was that.”
“I’m trying to understand,” she said, “how this husband, who was the perfect man, could have got to this.”
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters says workers at seven Amazon facilities will begin a strike Thursday morning in an effort by the union to pressure the e-commerce giant for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.
The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized walkouts in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Dec. 15 deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect any impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.
The Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a small portion of the 1.5 million people Amazon employs in its warehouses and corporate offices.
Amazon is ranked No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest companies.
At a warehouse in the New York City borough of Staten Island, thousands of workers who voted for the Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and have since affiliated with the Teamsters. At the other facilities, employees – including many delivery drivers – have unionized with them by demonstrating majority support but without holding government-administered elections.
The strikes happening Thursday are taking place at an Amazon warehouse in San Francisco and six delivery stations in southern California, New York City, Atlanta and the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, according to the union’s announcement. Amazon workers at the other facilities are “prepared to join” them, the union said.
“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” he said.
The Seattle-based online retailer has been seeking to re-do the election that led to the union victory at the warehouse on Staten Island, which the Teamsters now represent. In the process, the company has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.
Meanwhile, Amazon says the delivery drivers, which the Teamsters have organized for more than a year, aren’t its employees. Under its business model, the drivers work for third-party businesses, called Delivery Service Partners, who drop off millions of packages to customers everyday.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement. “The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.“
The Teamsters have argued Amazon essentially controls everything the drivers do and should be classified as an employer.
Some U.S. labor regulators have sided with the union in filings made before the NLRB. In September, Amazon boosted pay for the drivers amid the growing pressure.
NEW YORK — The Teamsters union is launching a strike against Amazon at numerous locations across the country, including in Maspeth, Queens.
The Teamsters are calling it the largest strike against Amazon in United States history, and it’s set to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday. In addition to New York City, workers will be joining picket lines in Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Illinois.
In a video announcement released Wednesday night, workers voiced their frustrations.
“Us being strike ready means we’re fed up, and Amazon is clearly ignoring us and we want to be heard,” one worker says in the video.
“It’s really exciting. We’re taking steps for ourselves to win better conditions, better benefits, better wages,” another worker in the video says.
The union says it represents about 10,000 Amazon employees and that Amazon ignored a deadline to come to the table and negotiate. The $2 trillion company doesn’t pay employees enough to make ends meet, the union asserts.
At the height of the holiday season, many are wondering what this means for packages currently in transit.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed.”
Amazon says Teamsters are misleading the public
An Amazon spokesperson says the Teamsters are misleading the public and do not represent any Amazon employees, despite any claims.
“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
An Amazon representative says the company doesn’t expect operations to be impacted.
