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On Monday, NASA’s highly anticipated Europa Clipper mission began with a successful launch from Florida, propelling the spacecraft toward Jupiter’s ice-encased moon, Europa, where scientists will investigate its potential to harbor life-sustaining ingredients.
Shortly after noon (1600 GMT), NASA’s Europa Clipper probe launched aboard the mighty SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, setting off on its lengthy voyage through space, expected to reach Jupiter’s icy moon Europa in about five and a half years.
NASA confirmed soon after the launch that communication with the Europa Clipper probe was successfully established, with the probe’s massive solar arrays—carefully engineered to capture the faint light reaching Jupiter’s orbit—fully unfurled, ensuring the spacecraft will have a steady power source for its long journey ahead.
The mission is expected to unlock crucial information about Europa, a moon that has long intrigued scientists due to the likelihood of an ocean lying beneath its icy crust, a feature that raises the tantalizing prospect of discovering extraterrestrial life.
“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,” NASA official Gina DiBraccio said ahead of the launch.
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“We’re looking for energy sources, and we’re really looking for the chemistry there, so that we can understand what habitable environments might be throughout our whole universe,” she added.
Should the mission uncover signs of life’s building blocks, NASA would need to plan another expedition to investigate further and potentially detect any potential life forms.
“It’s a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago” like Mars, Europa Clipper program scientist Curt Niebur told reporters, “but a world that might be habitable today, right now.”
At 30 meters (98 feet) wide with its solar panels fully extended, the probe is the largest ever designed by NASA for interplanetary exploration.
