Can an icy Jupiter moon sustain life? NASA’s biggest space probe will investigate.
Story by Joel Achenbach, William Neff, Leslie Shapiro
Europa, one of the four large moons of Jupiter first seen by Galileo 414 years ago, may have a deep, salty, global ocean hidden beneath a thick crust of ice. Where there is water, there might be life. In an ambitious $5 billion mission decades in the making, NASA is poised to send a jumbo robotic probe called the Europa Clipper to see if the icy moon has the key characteristics of a habitable world.
“This is a huge deal,” said Robert Pappalardo, the project scientist for the Europa Clipper at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
NASA officials had hoped to launch the spacecraft Thursday on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. But Hurricane Milton — the eye of which passed directly over Cape Canaveral — put everything on hold. Friday night, NASA said the launch window will open Monday. It extends to Nov. 6.
Life beyond Earth is among the greatest unknowns in science. Finding the first confirmed example of alien life has been a goal of NASA for decades. The scientific community has narrowed its focus to a few enticing targets, and at or very near the top of the list is this strange moon that looks like nothing else in the solar system.