NASA probe launches aboard SpaceX rocket, bound for Jupiter's icy ocean moon to search for the building blocks of life.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida Monday morning carrying a NASA probe designed to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and search for signs of alien life. With the Europa Clipper now on its 1.8-billion mile, five-and-a-half-year journey to the solar system's largest planet, NASA has officially retired a “tremendous amount of risk on the mission,” according to Jordan Evans, Europa Clipper project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
Scientists have advocated for a Europa mission for decades, ever since NASA's Galileo probe found that the moon likely has a subterranean global ocean, heated by Jupiter’s gravitational forces compressing and stretching the moon’s core as it orbits the gas giant at break-neck speed. With water, an energy source in the form of heat, and potentially organic compounds, scientists say Europa could be hospitable for alien life.
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