NASA chooses Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket to make trip to Jupiter moon | Financial

The contract for the Europa Clipper mission is worth $178 million, according to NASA. This moon is about 630 million kilometers from Earth. The journey is expected to take more than five years.

Kennedy Space Center

The mission is scheduled for October 2024 and will be performed from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon Heavy rocket from SpaceX. Initially, the mission was to use NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, but it was delayed and budget was overrun.

NASA is interested in the Europa moon because of salt water that would lie beneath its icy surface, which would allow life on the moon. The spacecraft will be equipped with cameras and spectrometers to capture high-resolution images. A radar is used to determine whether there is liquid water under the ice layer.

–