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On October 14th, 2024, NASA\u2019s Europa Clipper<\/em> mission launched atop a Falcon Heavy<\/em> rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will spend the next few years traveling 2.9 billion km (1.8 billion mi) to reach Jupiter\u2019s moon Europa, arriving in April 2030. Once it arrives in the system, the probe will establish orbit and conduct 49 close flybys of this \u201cOcean World\u201d and search for chemical elements that could indicate the presence of life (biosignatures) in the moon\u2019s interior. By July 2031, it will be joined by the ESA\u2019s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE), which will conduct a similar search around Callisto and Ganymede.<\/p>\n As is customary, the mission team has been checking and calibrating the Clipper\u2019s instruments since launch to ensure everything is in working order. The latest test involved the probe\u2019s stellar reference units (or star trackers), which captured and transmitted the Europa Clipper\u2019s first images of space. These two imaging cameras look for stars, which mission controllers use to help orient the spacecraft. This is critical when pointing the probe\u2019s telecommunications antennas toward Earth so it can send and receive critical mission data. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The picture (shown below) is composed of three shots that show stars 150 to 300 light-years away. The starfield includes the four brightest stars of the constellation Corvus (Gienah, Algorab, Kraz, and Alchiba), the Latin word for crow\u2014a bird in Greek mythology associated with Apollo. The starfield represents about 0.1% of the sky around the spacecraft, but this is enough for other spacecraft to determine its orientation. A 3D model of NASA\u2019s Europa Clipper<\/em> can be viewed in the agency\u2019s interactive Eyes on the Solar System.<\/p>\n \n