“NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission to Explore Jupiter’s Moon: Launch Details and Search for Extraterrestrial Life”[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQToTWKwtuw[/embed]

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What is Europa Clipper?

The NASA mission, which will cost $5.2 billion, will investigate whether Europa, Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, has ingredients and conditions favorable to life.

The Europa Clipper is the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built by NASA. When launched, it will weigh around 5,670 kilograms – almost half of that is fuel. When their solar panels are unfolded, they extend more than 30 meters – slightly longer than a basketball court.

The spacecraft will carry an array of nine scientific instruments, including cameras, spectrometers, a magnetometer and radar. Researchers on Earth will use this suite of instruments to study the surface and interior of the moon in greater detail than previous missions to Jupiter have been able to do.

When will it be released and how can I watch it?

The Europa Clipper will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Liftoff is scheduled for Monday at 12:06pm Eastern Time. Forecasts indicate a 95% chance of favorable weather. NASA will broadcast the announcement on its website starting at 11 am, or you can watch it in the video player above.

If the flight is unable to launch on Monday, backup opportunities are available on Tuesday and Wednesday.

NASA and SpaceX still have a few weeks to execute the mission. The spacecraft must be launched by November 6. After that date, it will not be able to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030.

After a five-and-a-half-year, 2.9 billion kilometer journey, Europa Clipper will enter orbit around Jupiter on April 11, 2030. It will then make 49 flybys of Europa over four years.

Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon. Its surface is clear and smooth, covered with ice and with few cracks. The flatness indicates the possibility of an ocean below, where water periodically breaks through the ice, pours to the surface and freezes, filling geological scars.

Measurements of Europa’s magnetic field taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft a few decades ago provided even more convincing evidence. The simplest and best explanation for this area is a salty ocean.

In fact, planetary scientists now believe that Europa could have twice as much water as all of Earth’s oceans combined.

With water there, the next question is: could anything live swimming in that ocean?

The other essential ingredients for life are thought to be energy and carbon molecules. Europa Clipper’s mission is to look for signs of these elements.

“I think Europa is definitely the most likely place for extraterrestrial life in our solar system,” said Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist. “And that’s because the ingredients for life are more likely to be in abundance and enough time to develop life.”

How will the spacecraft explore Europa?

Using nine spacecraft instruments, scientists hope to measure the depth of Europa’s ocean, identify some of the compounds on its icy surface and map its magnetic field in detail, which will provide additional information about what inside.

A thermal camera looks for hot spots, which may indicate places where the ice is thinner and the ocean is closer to the surface.

This instrument, along with radar, will detect lakes embedded in ice and cryovolcanoes that erupt water, not molten rock. The Hubble Space Telescope has already discovered what may be water vapor erupting from time to time from the surface of Europa.

During lunar flybys, a tube-shaped device about the size of a baguette will collect and identify molecules from the thin atmosphere, including carbon-based molecules that could be the building blocks for life. With luck, Europa Clipper could pass through one of the exploding plumes, which could be material from the ocean beneath the ice.