KENNEDY SPACE CENTRE, United States: Nasa probe Europa Clipper lifted off from the US Kennedy Space Centre on Monday, bound for an icy moon of Jupiter to discover whether it has the ingredients to support life.
Lift-off took place aboard SpaceX´s powerful Falcon Heavy rocket. The probe is set to reach Europa, one of Jupiter´s many moons, in five and a half years. The mission will allow the US space agency to uncover new details about Europa, which scientists believe could hold an ocean beneath its iced-over surface.
“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,” said Nasa official Gina DiBraccio, ahead of the launch.
“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.
If life´s ingredients are found, another mission would then have to make the journey to try and detect it. “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.”
The probe is the largest ever designed by Nasa for interplanetary exploration. Europa Clipper is 30 meters wide when its immense solar panels — designed to capture the weak light that reaches Jupiter — are fully extended.
