The St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station will host the first stop of NASA’s five stop touring exhibit Voyage of Europa Clipper: Exploring the Alien Ocean leading up to the October 2024 launch of the Europa Clipper mission. Cultivated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the mission will attempt to validate scientific hypotheses that one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, could contain an ocean larger than all of Earth’s oceans combined—meaning it could sustain life.
The interactive exhibit, running from June 13 to June 17, will be accessible without paid admission to the aquarium and will feature Washington University in St. Louis professor William McKinnon as a guest speaker. McKinnon serves as a co-investigator on the MASPEX, REASON, and Gravity Science teams and will analyze the data collected for several years once the mission has launched.
“Being the first aquarium to host this really brings a spotlight to St. Louis, because anytime you’re the first, you get the most recognition, the most publicity of any stop,” executive director of the St. Louis Aquarium Tami Brown says. “I think it’s going to be great, not only for the folks in St. Louis to have the chance to come and visit, but also to really give St. Louis a little bit of an extra national boost.”
The Europa Clipper, NASA’s next major mission, intends to evaluate the specific characteristics of the ocean that lies beneath Europa’s icy surface through “dozens and dozens of close flybys,” according to McKinnon.
The exhibit will highlight spacecraft and instrument models, an inflatable model of the moon Europa, educational graphics, and hands-on experiences and activities to help visitors understand the groundbreaking mission.
“It’s our next big step towards exploration of the deep outer solar system,” McKinnon says. “It’s a real in-depth look at a world we think is potentially habitable.”
The St. Louis Aquarium was selected as the first stop on the exhibit’s tour due to its standing as one of the most interactive aquariums in the nation. Following the opening in St. Louis, the exhibit will be featured in New Orleans, Louisiana; Woods Hole, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; and Orlando, Florida.
“When NASA first contacted us about the possibility of hosting this exhibit with them, they described all of the interactives that would be included in the exhibit…it just really fit the way that we love to present information,” Brown says. “So it seemed like an ideal partnership, and we’re so excited to be the first aquarium that NASA will be presenting this exhibit at.”
