Family-level launch record combining canonical variants, historical missions, public cadence forecasts, and available payload performance specs.
Historical missions are grouped by actual launch year. Forecast cadence uses family-level launch-rate rows.
| Year | Historical missions | Forecast launches |
|---|---|---|
| 1968 | 1 | 0 |
| 1969 | 1 | 0 |
| 1970 | 1 | 0 |
| 1971 | 1 | 0 |
Payload capacity by variant and target orbit when structured capacity rows are available.
| Variant | Orbit | Capacity | Altitude | Inclination | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
No performance specsNo structured payload capacity rows are linked to this vehicle family. | |||||
Latest launched missions using variants in this family.
| Mission | Variant | Launch |
|---|---|---|
| Launch 1971-F10 | Europa II | Nov 5, 1971 |
| Launch 1970-U02 | Europa I | Jun 12, 1970 |
| Launch 1969-F09 | Europa I | Jul 2, 1969 |
| Launch 1968-F09 |
Canonical variants rolled up into this launch vehicle family.
| Variant | Stages | Missions | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Europa I | Not stated | 3 | Retired |
Europa II | Not stated | 1 | Retired |
Europa I |
| Nov 29, 1968 |
Upcoming mission rows with announced launch timing.
| Mission | Variant | Announced |
|---|---|---|
No forecasted missionsNo upcoming announced mission rows are linked to this vehicle family. | ||
The Europa demonstrations under the Track 2 contract are slated to be completed by December 2027.
The Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) was estimated to cost $5–7 billion and was canceled in 2011.
SDA Acting Director GP Sandhoo supports using the acquisition flexibility of the HALO Europa program to leverage commercial investments, demonstrate mission utility quickly, reduce risk for operational layers of future tranches of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, and accelerate delivery of capability to the warfighter.
The contract is part of the Hybrid Acquisition for Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (HALO) program under the Europa Track 2 Commercial Solutions solicitation.
The Other Transaction Agreement is for Track 2 of the Europa program and is the first overall agreement for the Europa program.
The Europa solicitation was only open to the 19 vendors selected for the Hybrid Acquisition of Low-Earth Orbit (HALO) contract vehicle in October 2024.
NASA selected the Europa Clipper mission as a more focused study of Europa with an expected cost of $5.2 billion, and Europa Clipper launched in 2024 with an expected arrival at Europa in 2030.
In the near term Luna Europa – European Moonport Company will primarily serve to consolidate OHB’s existing Moon-related activities.
Luna Europa – European Moonport Company will focus on lunar exploration and the development of infrastructure for a sustained presence on the Moon’s surface.
The subsidiary Luna Europa – European Moonport Company was founded in May 2025 and lists OHB CEO Marco Fuchs and Sabine von der Recke as its managing directors.
Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus, and Callisto have subsurface oceans beneath ice shells.
The study concludes that Io assembled from dry materials and Europa accreted from ice-rich building blocks, indicating they were fundamentally different at birth.
Europa Clipper and JUICE will examine the interiors, surfaces, and space environments of Jupiter's large moons and probe plume activity and isotopic fingerprints of water in material erupting from Europa's icy shell.
A core component of the Investigating Ocean Worlds project is an investigation of lower-temperature fluids circulating beneath the seafloor of ocean worlds such as Europa.
NASA's Europa Clipper mission is scheduled to begin flybys of Europa in 2031.
The study attributes the compositional contrast between Io and Europa to spatial variations in temperature and chemistry within Jupiter's circumplanetary disk rather than to long-term volatile loss.
Olivier Mousis of Southwest Research Institute is the second author of a study published in The Astrophysical Journal about the divergent evolution of Io and Europa.
Europa still experiences tidal heating that helps prevent its subsurface ocean from freezing solid.
Catherine Cooper and Austin Green proposed that bands or patches of salt-rich surface ice on Europa can detach from the surrounding shell once they are sufficiently weakened.
The findings align with the objectives of NASA's Europa Clipper mission, which was launched in 2024 to perform multiple close flybys of Europa to investigate its ice shell, subsurface ocean, and potential to support life.