Following the successful completion of SpaceX’s fifth test flight and recovery of Starship, NASA’s unmanned probe to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa is set to launch on a SpaceX rocket. Europa is a moon believed to have an ocean beneath its surface ice layer, making it one of the most promising places to find extraterrestrial life.
On Sunday, NASA announced it would launch the unmanned probe Europa Clipper from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 PM Eastern Time on October 14. The launch was initially scheduled for October 10 but was delayed due to Hurricane Milton’s arrival.
The probe will be carried on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket and headed toward Jupiter. After leaving Earth, it is expected to travel 2.9 billion kilometers over five and a half years and enter Jupiter’s orbit in April 2030. The probe will then make 49 close flybys of Europa at an altitude of 16 miles (25 kilometers), conducting detailed investigations.
Europa, discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, is one of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons. With an equatorial diameter of about 1,940 miles (3,100 kilometers), it is roughly 90% the size of Earth’s Moon. Although it is the smallest of the Galilean moons, it ranks as the sixth largest moon in the solar system.
Europa features an ice layer estimated to be 12 to 18 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) thick. Scientists estimate that an ocean is potentially over 62 miles (100 kilometers) deep beneath this ice. In 2016, researchers even observed water erupting through the ice. The presence of water and oceans increases the potential for life on Europa, making it one of the most likely places in the solar system to find extraterrestrial life.
While Europa Clipper will not land on the moon, it is equipped with nine instruments, including a magnetometer, gravity measurement devices, a thermal mapper, a high-resolution camera, a spectrometer, and ice-penetrating radar, to gather clues about the moon’s interior. Morgan Cable, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), explained that the mission aims to map the characteristics of this alien ocean and determine the types of chemical or biochemical processes that could occur there.
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