“Including Falcon Heavy and other comparable launch vehicles, while still planning for SLS.â€.
NASA was left with a conundrum: does Europa Clipper sit in storage waiting for the chance to fly on an SLS rocket, or does the mission take a little longer to get to Jupiter.That decision led to NASA ultimately choosing to launch Clipper on Falcon Heavy.“The $178m quoted launch cost for the Falcon Heavy is $65m less than the launch of the Mars Perseverance rover on an Atlas V,†he said – which marks significant savings over the estimated $2bn that SLS was estimated to cost.
Falcon Heavy also raked in contracts to launch part of NASA’s upcoming lunar gateway, a vital piece of the agency’s moon architecture.Not only will it launch the Europa Clipper mission, but prior to that, Falcon Heavy is scheduled to propel the Psyche mission into orbit in 2022.