Mission to Jupiter’s Ocean Moon
FALL SERIES: Women in Scientific Exploration
Europa Clipper: Mission to Jupiter's Ocean Moon
Tricia L. Ray, NASA/JPL, ret.
November 14, 2026
5:30 – 7:30 pm
Sky’s The Limit Observatory & Nature Center
9697 Utah Trail, Twentynine Palms, CA
Reservations required; $25 per car
The Europa Clipper spacecraft, launched by NASA in October 2024, is currently on its way to Jupiter’s moon Europa, heading for an arrival in 2030 in the Jupiter system. Europa, a moon about the same size as Earth’s Moon, is thought to have a vast subsurface ocean beneath its icy surface and could be one of the best places in our solar system to search for life beyond the Earth. Learn all about Europa, why we think it could be habitable, and how the Europa Clipper mission will assess its habitability.
Trina L. Ray is an astronomer and retired scientist and science system engineer from NASA/JPL who has worked every outer planet flagship mission JPL has ever flown. She started her career on the Voyager Mission (Neptune encounter) in August of 1989. She worked decades on the Cassini mission earning a NASA Exceptional Service Medal for her work on the Titan flybys. She closed out her 36-year long career at JPL working on NASA’s newest flagship, Europa Clipper, and saw it successfully launch and enter its operations phase.
Trina is an active public speaker, having won the prestigious Bruce Murray award for Excellence in Education and Public Engagement and is invited to give public talks globally. An avid figure skating fan having won an auction for lifetime tickets to the U.S. Figure Skating Championships back in 2011, Trina has attended every year since 1996 and was delighted when Europa Clipper and U.S. Figure skating collaborated on short YouTube spot back in 2024 (Olympic Figure Skaters Explore the Icy Moon Europa with NASA (2min23seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQR_iNjEjlw).
She’s a Sci-Fi fan and the human attendant to two wonderful indoor cats.