Nasa spacecraft blasts off for Jupiter’s moon Europa in search of life

After a journey of nearly 3 billion kilometres, Europa Clipper is expected to arrive in Jupiter’s orbit in 2030

Reading Time:3 minutes

The probe was launched from the Cape Canaveral complex in Florida using a Falcon Heavy rocket. Photo: AP

Published: 12:36am, 15 Oct 2024Updated: 10:19am, 15 Oct 2024

Nasa launched a spacecraft from Florida on Monday on a mission to examine whether Jupiter’s moon Europa has conditions suitable to support life, with a focus on the large subsurface ocean believed to be lurking beneath its thick outer shell of ice.

The US space agency’s Europa Clipper spacecraft blasted off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket under sunny skies.

The robotic solar-powered probe is expected to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030 after journeying about 2.9 billion km (1.8 billion miles) in five-and-a-half years. The launch had been planned for last week but was put off because of Hurricane Milton.

It is the largest spacecraft Nasa has built for a planetary mission, at about 30.5 metres (100 feet) long and about 17.5 metres wide with its antennas and solar arrays fully deployed – bigger than a basketball court – while weighing around 6,000kg (13,000 pounds).

An artist’s concept showing Nasa’s Europa Clipper spacecraft flying past Jupiter’s moon Europa. Photo: Nasa/JPL-Caltech via Reuters

Even though Europa, the fourth-largest of Jupiter’s 95 officially recognised moons, is just a quarter of Earth’s diameter, its vast global ocean of salty liquid water may contain twice the water in Earth’s oceans. Earth’s oceans are thought to have been the birthplace for life on our planet.