NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft has officially launched on a mission to explore one of Jupiter’s moons—which could potentially support life.
Earlier today, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched the Europa Clipper from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft—which was originally scheduled to launch on Oct. 10 but was delayed by Hurricane Milton—seeks to study Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa.
According to CNN, Europa Clipper is NASA’s first spacecraft meant to study an ice-covered ocean world.
“The instruments work together hand in hand to answer our most pressing questions about Europa,” said Robert Pappalardo, the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement. “We will learn what makes Europa tick, from its core and rocky interior to its ocean and ice shell to its very thin atmosphere and the surrounding space environment.”
While the spacecraft isn’t designed to determine whether there is currently life on Europa, its instruments will help NASA better understand whether this would even be possible. In other words, can Europa sustain life as we know it?
“I think Europa is certainly the most likely place for life beyond Earth in our solar system,” said Robert Pappalardo, the project scientist for Europa Clipper. “And that’s because it is the most likely to have the ingredients for life in abundance and for there to be enough time for life to get going.”
This long-anticipated planetary mission will unfold over the next six years, with NASA providing mission updates.
“It’s a chance for us to explore, not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today—a chance to do the first exploration of this new kind of world that we’ve discovered very recently called an ocean world that is just totally immersed and covered in a liquid water ocean completely unlike anything we’ve seen before,” said Curt Niebur, Europa Clipper program scientist. “That’s what’s waiting [for] us at Europa.”
The post NASA’s Europa Clipper Blasts Off to Jupiter’s Icy Ocean Moon appeared first on VICE.
The post NASA’s Europa Clipper Blasts Off to Jupiter’s Icy Ocean Moon appeared first on VICE.
