NASA announced this Friday (23) the selection of SpaceX to launch a planned trip to the icy moon of Jupiter, Europe, a great victory for the company of the magnate Elon Musk, which is increasingly looking to explore the solar system.
The Europa Clipper mission will be launched in October 2024 on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a total contract of 178 million dollars.
The mission was to take off on NASA’s own Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which was plagued by delays and excessive costs. It has been called by critics the “jobs program” for the state of Alabama, where much of the development work takes place.
While the SLS is not yet operational, the Falcon Heavy has been deployed on both commercial and government missions since its maiden flight in 2018, when it took a Tesla Roadster car from Musk’s company into space.
The Falcon produces more than five million pounds of thrust (22 million Newtons) at takeoff, the equivalent of approximately 18 Boeing 747 aircraft.
The Europa clipper orbiter will pass about 40 to 50 times very close to Europa to determine whether the icy moon can hold conditions suitable for life.
It will carry cameras and spectrometers to produce high-resolution images and compositional maps of the surface and atmosphere, as well as radar to penetrate the ice sheet in search of liquid water.
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