Europa Clipper Captures Uranus With Star Tracker Camera

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Europa Clipper Captures Uranus With Star Tracker Camera

PIA26544

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NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Europa Clipper Captures Uranus With Star Tracker Camera

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Description
NASA’s Europa Clipper captured this image of a starfield — and the planet Uranus — on Nov. 5, 2025, while experimenting with one of its two stellar reference units. These star-tracking cameras are used for maintaining spacecraft orientation. Within the camera’s field of view — representing 0.1% of the full sky around the spacecraft — Uranus is visible as a larger dot near the left side of the image.

Figure A is an annotated version of the image with Uranus and several background stars labeled.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Figure B is an animated GIF made of a pair of images taken 10 hours apart. In this version, Uranus can be seen moving very slightly, relative to the background stars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

At the time the images were taken, Europa Clipper was about 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) from Uranus. The spacecraft is currently en route to the Jupiter system to study the icy moon Europa.
Europa Clipper launched in October 2024 and will arrive at the Jupiter system in 2030 to conduct about 50 flybys of Europa. The mission’s main science goal is to determine whether there are places below Europa’s surface that could support life. The mission’s three main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its surface interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.
For more information about Europa and Europa Clipper, go to: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper/

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