NASA's Europa Clipper successfully lifts off to find alien life on Jupiter's moon
The spacecraft is designed to reach the Jupiter system in April 2030 and will spend four years making close flybys of Europa, which is the most promising places in our solar system for the search of life beyond Earth. Photograph:( X )
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Lift-off took place with SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. The probe is set to reach Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons, in five and a half years
Lift-off took place with SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. The probe is set to reach Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons, in five and a half years
NASA on Monday (Oct 14) successfully launched its Europa Clipper mission aboard the powerful SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida for a five-and-a-half-year journey to Europa - one of Jupiter's many moons to find alien life.
The $5 billion probe is the largest ever designed by NASA for interplanetary exploration. It measures 30 metres wide when its immense solar panels, designed to capture the weak light that reaches Jupiter are fully extended.
Travelling 1.8 billion miles, it will orbit both the Earth and Mars to propel itself further towards Jupiter in the sling-shot effect. It is also expected to complete 49 close flybys of the Jupiter moon.
Leaving our water world, to explore another 🚀@EuropaClipper launched from @NASAKennedy at 12:06pm ET (16:06 UTC) on a @SpaceX Falcon Heavy, beginning a 1.8-billion-mile journey to explore the mysteries of Europa, Jupiter’s ocean moon. pic.twitter.com/IQ7uRSviMb
— NASA (@NASA) October 14, 2024
Watch | Europa Clipper Will Perform 49 Close Flybys Of Europa
Why Europa?
While Europa's existence, located 628.3 million kilometres away from Earth, has been known since 1610, the first close-up images were taken by the Voyager probes in 1979, which revealed mysterious reddish lines crisscrossing its surface.
The next probe to reach Jupiter's icy moon was NASA's Galileo probe in the 1990s, which found it was highly likely that the moon was home to an ocean.
Europa’s most dominant feature, that distinguishes it from our Moon, is its vast, salty ocean contained under a thick ice crust, which sometimes escapes through vast water plumes. Its icy crust is up to 25 km thick with certain chemicals that may be the building blocks for life on the moon.
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"With Europa Clipper, we're not searching for life on Europa, but we're trying to see if this ocean world is habitable, and that means we're looking for the water," explained NASA official Gina DiBraccio prior to the launch.
Scientists are aiming that the instrument on NASA’s Clipper spacecraft will map the entire moon, will also collect dust particles and fly through the water plumes.
If life's ingredients are found, another mission would then have to make the journey to try and detect it.
(With inputs from agencies)
