Europa Clipper is a NASA mission that will search for life conditions on a moon of Jupiter.

This Monday, NASA launched the Europa Clipper space mission from Florida, which will head to Europa, one of the moons of the planet Jupiter, and which has evidence that beneath its icy crust lies an ocean of liquid water that could harbor life.

• Europa Clipper was launched by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center. His departure was originally scheduled for last Thursday, but was postponed due to the arrival of Hurricane Milton in Florida.

Why is the moon Europa? NASA explains that there is “strong” evidence that Europa, slightly smaller in size than Earth’s moon, has a saltwater ocean beneath the ice sheet that covers its outer surface, making it one of the “most promising” places to search currently a habitable environment in space. Solar system.

• Europa generates heat within itself through friction generated as it orbits Jupiter, thereby preventing its groundwater from freezing.

• This could help produce the chemical building blocks for life on the seafloor, including hydrogen and oxygen, among others.

Mission. The main goal of the Europa Clipper mission is to determine whether there are places beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon that could support life, by studying the nature of the ice sheet, its internal ocean, its composition and geology.

To achieve this, Europa Clipper will fly 2.9 billion kilometers to reach Jupiter in April 2030. The spacecraft will enter orbit around the planet and make nearly 50 close flybys of Europa’s moon to determine whether it has favorable conditions for life.

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Ship.

Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft developed by NASA for a planetary mission. With the panels deployed, the spacecraft is five meters high and more than 30.5 meters wide.