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Cobertura de la NASA del lanzamiento de Europa Clipper a una luna de Júpiter


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Concepto artístico de la nave espacial Europa Clipper de la NASA.

Créditos: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Read this release in English here.

La NASA ofrecerá cobertura en directo, en inglés y en español, de las actividades previas al lanzamiento y del lanzamiento de Europa Clipper, la misión de la agencia para explorar Europa, una luna helada de Júpiter. La cobertura del lanzamiento se ofrecerá también en español. La NASA prevé que el lanzamiento se dé a las 12:31 p.m. EDT (hora del este) del jueves, 10 de octubre, a bordo de un cohete SpaceX Falcon Heavy desde el Complejo de Lanzamiento 39A en el Centro Espacial Kennedy de la NASA en Florida.

Más allá de la Tierra, Europa, una luna de Júpiter, es considerada uno de los entornos con más potencial para la habitabilidad del sistema solar. Tras un viaje de aproximadamente 1.800 millones de millas (unos 2.900 millones de kilómetros), Europa Clipper entrará en órbita alrededor de Júpiter en abril de 2030. Desde ahí, la nave espacial llevará a cabo un estudio detallado de Europa para determinar si este mundo helado podría presentar condiciones adecuadas para la vida. Europa Clipper es la mayor nave espacial que la NASA ha desarrollado para una misión planetaria. Transporta un conjunto de nueve instrumentos y un experimento gravitatorio, los cuales investigarán un océano bajo la superficie de Europa que los científicos creen que contiene el doble de agua líquida que los océanos de la Tierra.

Para consultar el calendario de eventos en directo y las plataformas en las que se retransmitirán, visita:

https://go.nasa.gov/europaclipperlive

El plazo para la acreditación de los medios de comunicación para la cobertura presencial de este lanzamiento ya finalizó. La política de acreditación de medios de la NASA está disponible en línea (en inglés). Si tienes preguntas sobre la acreditación de los medios de comunicación, envía un correo electrónico a: ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov.

La cobertura de la misión de la NASA es la siguiente (todas las horas son del este y están sujetas a cambios en función de las operaciones a tiempo real):

Martes, 8 de octubre

1 p.m. – Entrevistas presenciales, abiertas a los medios de comunicación acreditados para este lanzamiento.

3:30 p.m. – Sesión informativa científica de Europa Clipper de la NASA con los siguientes participantes:

  • Gina DiBraccio, directora en funciones, División de Ciencias Planetarias, Sede de la NASA
  • Robert Pappalardo, científico de proyecto, Europa Clipper, Laboratorio de Propulsión a Chorro de la NASA (NASA JPL)
  • Haje Korth, científico adjunto de proyecto, Europa Clipper, Laboratorio de Física Aplicada de la Universidad Johns Hopkins
  • Cynthia Phillips, científica de proyecto, Europa Clipper, NASA JPL

La cobertura de la conferencia de prensa científica se retransmitirá en directo en NASA+ y en el sitio web de la agencia, Aprende cómo ver contenidos de la NASA a través de diversas plataformas, incluidas las redes sociales.

Los representantes de los medios de comunicación podrán formular preguntas tanto presencialmente como por teléfono. El espacio disponible en el auditorio para la participación en persona será limitado. Para obtener el número de teléfono y el código de acceso a la conferencia, los medios de comunicación deberán ponerse en contacto con la sala de prensa de la NASA en Kennedy a más tardar una hora antes del comienzo del acto: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.

Miércoles, 9 de octubre

2 p.m. – Panel social del NASA Social en el centro Kennedy, con los siguientes participantes:

  • Kate Calvin, científica jefe y asesora principal sobre el clima, sede de la NASA
  • Caley Burke, analista de diseño de vuelos, Programa de Servicios de Lanzamiento de la NASA
  • Erin Leonard, científica del proyecto Europa Clipper, NASA JPL
  • Juan Pablo León, ingeniero de banco de pruebas de sistemas, Europa Clipper, NASA JPL (León es hispanohablante)
  • Elizabeth Turtle, investigadora principal, instrumento de sistema de imágenes de Europa, Europa Clipper, APL

Esta mesa redonda se transmitirá en directo a través de las cuentas de la NASA en YouTube, X y Facebook. Los miembros del público pueden hacer preguntas en línea publicando en las transmisiones en vivo de YouTube, X y Facebook o usando el hashtag #AskNASA.

3:30 p.m. – Conferencia de prensa de la NASA previa al lanzamiento de Europa Clipper (tras la finalización de la revisión del estado de preparación para el lanzamiento), con los siguientes participantes:

  • Administrador asociado de la NASA Jim Free
  • Sandra Connelly, administradora adjunta, Dirección de Misiones Científicas, Sede de la NASA
  • Tim Dunn, director de lanzamiento, Programa de Servicios de Lanzamiento de la NASA
  • Julianna Scheiman, directora para misiones científicas de la NASA, SpaceX
  • Jordan Evans, gerente de proyecto, Europa Clipper, NASA JPL
  • Mike McAleenan, meteorólogo de lanzamiento, 45º Escuadrón Meteorológico, Fuerza Espacial de EE.UU.

La conferencia de prensa previa al lanzamiento se retransmitirá en directo en NASA+, el sitio web de la agencia, la aplicación de la NASA, y YouTube.

Los representantes de los medios de comunicación podrán formular preguntas tanto presencialmente como por teléfono. El espacio disponible en el auditorio para la participación en persona será limitado. Para obtener el número de teléfono y el código de acceso a la conferencia, los medios de comunicación deberán ponerse en contacto con la sala de prensa de la NASA en Kennedy a más tardar una hora antes del comienzo del acto: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.

5:30 p.m. – Transmisión del despliegue de Europa Clipper de la NASA a la plataforma de lanzamiento. La retransmisión en vivo (en inglés) estará disponible en NASA+, el sitio web de la agencia, la aplicación de la NASA, y YouTube.

Jueves, 10 de octubre

11:30 a.m. – La cobertura en inglés del lanzamiento empezará en NASA+ y el el sitio web de la agencia.

11:30 a.m. – La cobertura en español del lanzamiento empezará en NASA+ y el canal de YouTube en español de la NASA.

12:31 p.m. – Lanzamiento.

Cobertura de audio

El audio de las conferencias de prensa y de la cobertura del lanzamiento, ambos en inglés, se transmitirá por los circuitos «V» de la NASA, a los que se puede acceder marcando 321-867-1220, -1240 o -7135. El día del lanzamiento, el «audio de la misión», es decir, las actividades de la cuenta atrás sin los comentarios de los medios de NASA+ sobre el lanzamiento, se retransmitirá por el 321-867-7135.

Cobertura de vídeo en directo previa al lanzamiento
La NASA proporcionará una conexión de vídeo en directo del Complejo de Lanzamiento 39A aproximadamente 18 horas antes del despegue previsto de la misión en el canal de YouTube de la sala de prensa de la NASA en Kennedy. La transmisión será ininterrumpida hasta que comience la emisión del lanzamiento en NASA+.

Cobertura del lanzamiento en el sitio web de la NASA
La cobertura de la misión el día del lanzamiento estará disponible en el sitio web de la agencia. La cobertura incluirá enlaces a retransmisiones en directo (en español e inglés) y actualizaciones del blog que comenzarán no antes de las 10 a.m. del 10 de octubre, a medida que se cumplan los hitos de la cuenta regresiva. Poco después del despegue se podrá acceder a vídeos y fotos del lanzamiento en streaming a demanda.

Siga la cobertura de la cuenta regresiva en el blog de Europa Clipper (en inglés). Si tiene alguna pregunta sobre la cobertura de la cuenta atrás, póngase en contacto con la sala de prensa Kennedy llamando al 321-867-2468.

Para obtener información sobre cobertura en español en el Centro Espacial Kennedy o si desea solicitar entrevistas en español, comuníquese con María José Viñas: maria-jose.vinasgarcia@nasa.gov, Antonia Jaramillo: antonia.jaramillobotero@nasa.gov o Messod Bendayan: messod.c.bendayan@nasa.gov

Asistencia virtual al lanzamiento

Los miembros del público pueden registrarse para asistir virtualmente a este lanzamiento. El programa de invitados virtuales (en inglés) de la NASA para esta misión también incluye recursos curados de lanzamiento, notificaciones sobre oportunidades o cambios relacionados, y un sello para el pasaporte de invitado virtual de la NASA después del lanzamiento.

Observación y participación en redes sociales

Haz que la gente sepa que estás siguiendo la misión en X, Facebook e Instagram utilizando los hashtags #EuropaClipper y #NASASocial. También puedes mantenerte conectado siguiendo y etiquetando estas cuentas:

X: @NASA, @EuropaClipper, @NASASolarSystem, @NASAJPL, @NASAKennedy, @NASA_LSP, @NASA_ES (en español)

Facebook: NASA, NASA’s Europa Clipper, NASA’s JPL, NASA’s Launch Services Program, NASA en español

Instagram: @NASA, @nasasolarsystem, @NASAKennedy@NASAJPL, @NASA_ES (en español)

Para más información en español sobre la misión:

https://ciencia.nasa.gov/europaclipper

-fin-

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser/ María José Viñas
Sede, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser.nasa.gov  / maria-jose.vinasgarcia@nasa.gov

Leejay Lockhart
Centro Espacial Kennedy, Florida
321-747-8310
leejay.lockhart@nasa.gov

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Last Updated
Oct 03, 2024
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Kennedy Space Center

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      The Learning Ecosystems Northeast project is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AB94A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn/about-science-activation/.
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      This artist’s concept shows a brown dwarf — an object larger than a planet but not massive enough to kickstart fusion in its core like a star. Brown dwarfs are hot when they form and may glow like this one, but over time they get closer in temperature to gas giant planets like Jupiter. NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor An unusual cosmic object is helping scientists better understand the chemistry hidden deep in Jupiter and Saturn’s atmospheres — and potentially those of exoplanets.
      Why has silicon, one of the most common elements in the universe, gone largely undetected in the atmospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, and gas planets like them orbiting other stars? A new study using observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope sheds light on this question by focusing on a peculiar object that astronomers discovered by chance in 2020 and called “The Accident.”
      The results were published on Sept. 4 in the journal Nature.
      As shown in this graphic, brown dwarfs can be far more massive than even large gas planets like Jupiter and Saturn. However, they tend to lack the mass that kickstarts nuclear fusion in the cores of stars, causing them to shine. NASA/JPL-Caltech The Accident is a brown dwarf, a ball of gas that’s not quite a planet and not quite a star. Even among its already hard-to-classify peers, The Accident has a perplexing mix of physical features, some of which have been previously seen in only young brown dwarfs and others seen only in ancient ones. Because of those features, it slipped past typical detection methods before being discovered five years ago by a citizen scientist participating in Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. The program lets people around the globe look for new discoveries in data from NASA’s now-retired NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
      The brown dwarf nicknamed “The Accident” can be seen moving in the bottom left corner of this video, which shows data from NASA’s now-retired NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer), launched in 2009 with the moniker WISE. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Dan Caselden   The Accident is so faint and odd that researchers needed NASA’s most powerful space observatory, Webb, to study its atmosphere. Among several surprises, they found evidence of a molecule they couldn’t initially identify. It turned out to be a simple silicon molecule called silane (SiH4). Researchers have long expected — but been unable — to find silane not only in our solar system’s gas giants, but also in the thousands of atmospheres belonging to brown dwarfs and to the gas giants orbiting other stars. The Accident is the first such object where this molecule has been identified.
      Scientists are fairly confident that silicon exists in Jupiter and Saturn’s atmospheres but that it is hidden. Bound to oxygen, silicon forms oxides such as quartz that can seed clouds on hot gas giants, bearing a resemblance to dust storms on Earth. On cooler gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, these types of clouds would sink far beneath lighter layers of water vapor and ammonia clouds, until any silicon-containing molecules are deep in the atmosphere, invisible even to the spacecraft that have studied those two planets up close.
      Some researchers have also posited that lighter molecules of silicon, like silane, should be found higher up in these atmospheric layers, left behind like traces of flour on a baker’s table. That such molecules haven’t appeared anywhere except in a single, peculiar brown dwarf suggests something about the chemistry occurring in these environments.
      “Sometimes it’s the extreme objects that help us understand what’s happening in the average ones,” said Faherty, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and lead author on the new study.
      Happy accident
      Located about 50 light-years from Earth, The Accident likely formed 10 billion to 12 billion years ago, making it one of the oldest brown dwarfs ever discovered. The universe is about 14 billion years old, and at the time that The Accident developed, the cosmos contained mostly hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of other elements, including silicon. Over eons, elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen forged in the cores of stars, so planets and stars that formed more recently possess more of those elements.
      Webb’s observations of The Accident confirm that silane can form in brown dwarf and planetary atmospheres. The fact that silane seems to be missing in other brown dwarfs and gas giant planets suggests that when oxygen is available, it bonds with silicon at such a high rate and so easily, virtually no silicon is left over to bond with hydrogen and form silane.
      So why is silane in The Accident? The study authors surmise it is because far less oxygen was present in the universe when the ancient brown dwarf formed, resulting in less oxygen in its atmosphere to gobble up all the silicon. The available silicon would have bonded with hydrogen instead, resulting in silane.
      “We weren’t looking to solve a mystery about Jupiter and Saturn with these observations,” said JPL’s Peter Eisenhardt, project scientist for the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission, which was later repurposed as NEOWISE. “A brown dwarf is a ball of gas like a star, but without an internal fusion reactor, it gets cooler and cooler, with an atmosphere like that of gas giant planets. We wanted to see why this brown dwarf is so odd, but we weren’t expecting silane. The universe continues to surprise us.”
      Brown dwarfs are often easier to study than gas giant exoplanets because the light from a faraway planet is typically drowned out by the star it orbits, while brown dwarfs generally fly solo. And the lessons learned from these objects extend to all kinds of planets, including ones outside our solar system that might feature potential signs of habitability. 
      “To be clear, we’re not finding life on brown dwarfs,” said Faherty. “But at a high level, by studying all of this variety and complexity in planetary atmospheres, we’re setting up the scientists who are one day going to have to do this kind of chemical analysis for rocky, potentially Earth-like planets. It might not specifically involve silicon, but they’re going to get data that is complicated and confusing and doesn’t fit their models, just like we are. They’ll have to parse all those complexities if they want to answer those big questions.”
      More about WISE, Webb  
      A division of Caltech, JPL managed and operated WISE for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The mission was selected competitively under NASA’s Explorers Program managed by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The NEOWISE mission was a project of JPL and the University of Arizona in Tucson, supported by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
      For more information about WISE, go to:
      https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html
      The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory, and an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
      To learn more about Webb, visit:
      https://science.nasa.gov/webb
      News Media Contacts
      Calla Cofield
      Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
      626-808-2469
      calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
      Christine Pulliam
      Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
      cpulliam@stsci.edi
      2025-113
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      Last Updated Sep 09, 2025 Related Terms
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