CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft is ready to set sail for Jupiter and its moon Europa, one of the best bets for finding life beyond Earth.
Europa Clipper will peer beneath the moon’s icy crust where an ocean is thought to be sloshing fairly close to the surface. It won’t search for life, but rather determine whether conditions there could support it. Another mission would be needed to flush out any microorganisms lurking there.
“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,” said program scientist Curt Niebur.
Its massive solar panels make Clipper the biggest craft built by NASA to investigate another planet. It will take 5 1/2 years to reach Jupiter and will sneak within 16 miles (25 kilometers) of Europa's surface — considerably closer than any other spacecraft.
Liftoff is targeted for this month aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Mission cost: $5.2 billion.
One of Jupiter’s 95 known moons, Europa is almost the size of our own moon. It's encased in an ice sheet estimated to be 10 miles to 15 miles or more (15 kilometers to 24 kilometers) thick. Scientists believe this frozen crust hides an ocean that could be 80 miles (120 kilometers) or more deep. The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted what appear to be geysers erupting from the surface. Discovered by Galileo in 1610, Europa is one of the four so-called Galilean moons of Jupiter, along with Ganymede, Io and Callisto.
What type of life might Europa harbor? Besides water, organic compounds are needed for life as we know it, plus an energy source. In Europa’s case that could be thermal vents on the ocean floor. Deputy project scientist Bonnie Buratti imagines any life would be primitive like the bacterial life that originated in Earth’s deep ocean vents. “We will not know from this mission because we can’t see that deep,” she said. Unlike missions to Mars where habitability is one of many questions, Clipper’s sole job is to establish whether the moon could support life in its ocean or possibly in any pockets of water in the ice.
When its solar wings and antennas are unfurled, Clipper is about the size of a basketball court — more than 100 feet (30 meters) end to end — and weighs nearly 13,000 pounds (6,000 kilograms). The supersized solar panels are needed because of Jupiter’s distance from the sun. The main body — about the size of a camper — is packed with nine science instruments, including radar that will penetrate the ice, cameras that will map virtually the entire moon and tools to tease out the contents of Europa’s surface and tenuous atmosphere. The name hearkens to the swift sailing ships of centuries past.
The roundabout trip to Jupiter will span 1.8 billion miles (3 billion kilometers). For extra oomph, the spacecraft will swing past Mars early next year and then Earth in late 2026. It arrives at Jupiter in 2030 and begins science work the next year. While orbiting Jupiter, it will cross paths with Europa 49 times. The mission ends in 2034 with a planned crash into Ganymede — Jupiter’s biggest moon and the solar system's too.
There’s more radiation around Jupiter than anywhere else in our solar system, besides the sun. Europa passes through Jupiter’s bands of radiation as it orbits the gas giant, making it especially menacing for spacecraft. That’s why Clipper’s electronics are inside a vault with dense aluminum and zinc walls. All this radiation would nix any life on Europa’s surface. But it could break down water molecules and, perhaps, release oxygen all the way down into the ocean that could possibly fuel sea life.
Earlier this year, NASA was in a panic that the spacecraft's many transistors might not withstand the intense radiation. But after months of analysis, engineers concluded the mission could proceed as planned.
NASA’s twin Pioneer spacecraft and then two Voyagers swept past Jupiter in the 1970s. The Voyagers provided the first detailed photos of Europa but from quite a distance. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft had repeated flybys of the moon during the 1990s, passing as close as 124 miles (200 kilometers). Still in action around Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has added to Europa’s photo album. Arriving at Jupiter a year after Clipper will be the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft, launched last year.
Like Europa, Jupiter’s jumbo moon Ganymede is thought to host an underground ocean. But its frozen shell is much thicker — possibly 100 miles (160 kilometers) thick — making it tougher to probe the environment below. Callisto’s ice sheet may be even thicker, possibly hiding an ocean. Saturn’s moon Enceladus has geysers shooting up, but it’s much farther than Jupiter. Ditto for Saturn’s moon Titan, also suspected of having a subterranean sea. While no ocean worlds have been confirmed beyond our solar system, scientists believe they’re out there — and may even be relatively common.
Like many robotic explorers before it, Clipper bears messages from Earth. Attached to the electronics vault is a triangular metal plate. On one side is a design labeled “water words” with representations of the word for water in 104 languages. On the opposite side: a poem about the moon by U.S. poet laureate Ada Limon and a silicon chip containing the names of 2.6 million people who signed up to vicariously ride along.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
This illustration provided by NASA depicts the Europa Clipper spacecraft above the surface of the moon Europa, foreground, and Jupiter behind. (NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)
This illustration provided by NASA depicts the Europa Clipper spacecraft over the moon, Europa, with Jupiter at background left. (NASA/JPL-Caltech via AP)
NELSONVILLE, N.Y. (AP) — Voters in a ring of congressional districts encircling New York City where Republican candidates often do well but Donald Trump struggled in 2020 could decide which party controls the U.S. House for the next two years.
Eleven districts within a 90-mile drive of Manhattan are expected to be among the country's most closely contested House races on Election Day.
Republicans hold a slim 6-5 edge now in the nearly contiguous circle that starts in the Long Island suburbs, cuts through western Connecticut and New York's Hudson River Valley and Catskills regions, then carves through northeast Pennsylvania before curling back into New Jersey.
Both parties have a shot at picking up seats across the broad territory of dense suburbs, leafy exurbs and former mill towns. Democrats have made the region an important part of their strategy to reclaim a House majority, but voters in the districts have been far from uniform in their thinking in recent elections.
They have been united in two key ways: Most have been open to Republican candidates, but they also have shown an aversion to Trump. That means having the former president at the top of the GOP ballot this year could be decisive in congressional races unless opposition to him has softened or voters in the region are willing to split their tickets.
Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in all but two of the 11 districts in 2020. Two years later, voters in seven of them sent Republicans to Congress. In three of those districts where Republicans won in 2022, and two more where Democrats prevailed by razor-thin margins, Trump lost to Biden by at least 10 percentage points, according to voting data tabulated by The Associated Press.
It isn’t clear whether the political dynamics that helped Republicans do well outside New York City in the 2022 midterms exist today. In that election, many suburban voters were worried about a spike in violent crime after the COVID-19 pandemic. But crime rates since then have dropped.
“The message environment in 2022 made the battlefields very uphill for Democrats,” said former U.S. Rep. Steve Israel, a Long Island Democrat who once served as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
But in a presidential election year, with Trump in a fierce campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, “the message environment is defined by the top of the ticket.” Israel said. “In these districts, this tends to become a referendum on Donald.”
The ability of Republican candidates to outperform Trump two years ago was illustrated in New York's 17th Congressional District, a suburban area north of the city that is home to the Village of Sleepy Hollow, Sing Sing Prison and such luminaries as Bill and Hillary Clinton and the billionaire George Soros.
Trump owns a golf club and a private estate in the district, but still lost to Biden there by 10 percentage points. In 2022, Republican Mike Lawler narrowly defeated U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat who had been in office for a decade.
Now, Lawler is in a tough campaign against Mondaire Jones, a former Democratic congressman who was one of the first two openly gay Black men to serve in the House when he was elected in 2020. Jones lost his seat when the boundaries of his district were redrawn.
Both candidates have geared their strategies toward attracting moderate voters, while criticizing each other as being in league with radicals.
“People are waking up to the fact that even if they don’t believe Mike Lawler is as bad as Marjorie Taylor Greene, they can’t afford to vote for him because he empowers the chaos and the extremism that we are seeing down in Washington,” Jones told The Associated Press, referring to the far-right congresswoman from Georgia.
Democrats have also claimed that Lawler wants to ban abortion, which the Republican denies. Lawler said Democrats are trying to mislead voters on an issue that has proved to be a winner for many Democrats since the Supreme Court in 2022 ended constitutional protections for abortion rights.
“It speaks to the fact that they have nothing else to discuss or talk about, from the economy to the border to the international crises around the globe,” Lawler told the AP.
Lawler's approach has worked with constituents such as Michelle Patterson, 71, who lives in a small home adorned with Trump flags and Republican lawn signs in the village of Nelsonville.
She described Lawler as “common sense” and Jones as a “radical” and said Democrats are trying to distract voters with their warnings about abortion access.
“He’s not advocating to ban abortion!” she said of Lawler.
For other voters, it’s a harder sell.
“I don’t believe him,” said Jill Ferson, 77, a social worker who lives in the village of Croton-on-Hudson, when asked about Lawler saying he will not support a federal abortion ban.
Ferson said her biggest concerns this election were keeping Trump out of office and preserving abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
Similar dynamics surface in the other ring districts.
On Long Island, Republican Rep. Anthony D'Esposito is trying to hold onto a congressional district right outside New York City that Biden won by 15 percentage points. D'Esposito is trying to cast Democrat Laura Gillen as soft on crime while criticizing Democrats over immigration policies he blames for an influx of migrants.
Gillen, a former town supervisor, has rejected those criticisms and said that if elected, she would push for more law enforcement and border security.
Northwest of the city, Democrat Josh Riley is trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro, a Republican, in a rematch of their close contest in 2022. The district runs from the Hudson River Valley to the Finger Lakes.
In some New York districts, Democrats could face questions about the indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted bribes and illegal campaign contributions. But Adams is not on the ballot, so that may not matter to voters. While some Republicans have used the scandal to assert that there's rampant corruption in the Democratic Party, Trump has spoken sympathetically about Adams, portraying his prosecution as politically motivated.
In northeast Pennsylvania, a presidential battleground, three perennially contested congressional districts feature incumbents with a knack for survival. They include Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who is chasing a fifth term in a district that favored Biden by 5 percentage points in 2020. His opponent is Ashley Ehasz, a former Army helicopter pilot whom he two years ago by almost 10 percentage points.
Solidly blue New Jersey and Connecticut also have at least one competitive race apiece.
In a New Jersey district that includes Trump's Bedminster golf club, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. is seeking a second term against Democrat Sue Altman, a former leader of the state’s progressive Working Families Alliance.
In Connecticut, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes is matched up again with former Republican state Sen. George Logan, whom she defeated by less than 1 percent two years ago in a district Biden won by 11 percentage points.
At a recent debate, Hayes accused Logan of hiding his support for Trump. Logan denied that, but did not say Trump's name once.
This combination photos shows Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., left, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 23, 2023, and Josh Riley in Binghamton, N.Y., Nov. 8, 2022. (AP Photo)
This combination of photos taken Oct. 18, 2022, in Waterbury, Conn. before a debate shows Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., left, and Republican House candidate George Logan. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
In this combination photo, Sue Altman speaks at a public forum, Aug. 23, 2016, in Bordentown, N.J., left, and Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., speaks during a news conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo)
This combination photo shows Ashley Ehasz at her campaign headquarters, June 4, 2024, in Bristol, Pa., left, and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., at an event in Washington Crossing, Pa., Nov. 6, 2022 (AP Photo)
FILE — Mike Lawler, Republican candidate in New York's 17th Congressional District, greets supporters as he arrives to attend his election-night party, Nov. 8, 2022, in Pearl River, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)
