NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will come within 16 miles of the moon's surface. Jupiter’s moon Europa. Now, it’s finally happening: A spacecraft bound for the icy world is scheduled to blast off from Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX rocket as early as October 10. NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will spend five and a half years cruising to the Jovian system and then conduct nearly 50 flybys of the enigmatic moon to investigate its many mysteries.
The Galileo probe provided an enticing view of Europa's surface, showing domes, ridges and red splotches that contain organic or carbon molecules.NASA's Juno mission primarily focuses on Jupiter but captured this image of Europa during a flyby of the gas giant in 2022. For the first time, scientists had evidence for an icy ocean world, a category that is now known to include Europa’s siblings Calisto and Ganymede, as well as Saturn’s Enceladus and Titan, and Neptune’s Triton.
Such resolution will allow researchers to investigate how the ice shell moves and breaks apart, whether it contains sections that are sliding underneath one another likeon our planet, and, perhaps most crucially, whether there are passageways or conduits connecting Europa’s exterior to its interior ocean.
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