Barring any last-minute contingencies, this Monday night, at seven o’clock, a rocket from Space X, Elon Musk’s space company, will take off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying its Europa Clipper mission ship. NASA which will carry out a detailed study of Europa, its satellite To that all available evidence indicates that beneath its frozen surface, at a depth of tens of km, there is a ocean This is why it is considered one of the most promising targets in the search for extraterrestrial life.
Using a sophisticated suite of scientific instruments in order to investigate whether this moon has suitable conditions for life. The mission’s main objectives will be to obtain high-resolution images of Europa’s surface, determine its composition, look for signs of recent or ongoing geological activity, measure the thickness of the moon’s icy layer, search for underground lakes and infer depth and salinity. of Europa’s ocean.
Jupiter’s icy moon was the first of our solar system’s interstellar bodies to have water in liquid form, even underground. In the following years, the existence of subsurface oceans was indicated on several moons of Jupiter and Saturn, but also on dwarf planets such as Pluto and Demeter.
The Europa Clipper is expected to reach its destination in 2030. It was originally planned to be launched on NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket. Interest in Europa gained momentum in the 1990s when NASA’s Galileo probe provided evidence that Europa harbored an ocean of liquid water beneath its outer shell. Jupiter’s moon probably has a rocky core, surrounded by about 80 km of liquid water, which in turn is covered by a layer of ice about 20 km thick.
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