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The Hunt for Life on Europa Is About to Kick Up a Gear

Wired
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Europa Clipper , a NASA spacecraft, will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket this month or early next .

The $5.2 billion mission has one clear purpose: finding out if Europa ever was, or still is, habitable.

The aim is to find out if some of the essential elements of life, such as carbon and nitrogen, are present in that ocean.

NASA 's Europa Clipper will launch in May 2024 .

The spacecraft will perform 49 flybys of Europa as it dives into and back out of the Jovian system every 21 days .

Radar could find pockets of water trapped in the moon’s ice , potentially habitable places in the ice shell’.

If Clipper succeeds in showing that Europa is habitable, the next mission to the moon would almost certainly be a lander.

The lander could touch down in a region on Europa ’s surface where ocean material is known to be exposed and directly study it, looking for signs of life.