This color view of Jupiter’s moon Europa was captured by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. The Europa Clipper, which is set to launch on Monday, will take un unprecedented examination of the moon in 2030. File Photo courtesy of NASA
The $5 billion Europa Clipper will launch from the Kennedy Space Center on Monday for a four-year trek to Jupiter’s moon to take a closer look at the possible ocean beneath its icy crust.
The probe, set to blast off at 12:06 p.m., EDT from Pad 39A near Cape Canaveral on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is expected to reach the moon, Europa, in April 2030. Advertisement
Researchers believe Europa has one of the highest probabilities for life because of what they believe is water under miles of thick ice. In past missions, scientists have seen water plumes break through the surface.
New instruments on the Europa Clipper will help scientists better understand if Europa is habitable.
The mission was originally set to blast off on Sunday, but the impact of Hurricane Milton led NASA and SpaceX to delay the launch until Monday. The extra day gave the space agency and SpaceX to give the rocket one good once-over after the hurricane passed.
“One of the things we have done, working really closely with our NASA Launch Services Program team, is looking at what hardware on the vehicle was set, was suspect, was needed to be evaluated as part of this issue and make sure that it had its necessary checks and validation as needed,” said Julianna Scheiman, director of NASA Science Missions for SpaceX, according to SpaceFlightNow.com. Advertisement
