SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Launches NASA’s Europa Clipper in Groundbreaking Mission To Explore Jupiter’s Moon and Find out if Its Ocean Can Hold Life

Gateway Pundit ^ | 10/15/2024 | Paul Serran

[DFG]

It’s not every day that humans launch a space mission of such potential as it was done on Monday in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket was launched on a quest to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa and reveal whether its vast hidden ocean might hold the keys to life.

The mission will take the spacecraft Europa Clipper five and a half years to reach Jupiter, orbit around the Solar system’s largest planet and sneak close to its fourth largest moon, Europa.

Associated Press reported:

“Scientists are almost certain a deep, global ocean exists beneath Europa’s icy crust. And where there is water, there could be life, making the moon one of the most promising places out there to hunt for it.

Europa Clipper won’t look for life; it has no life detectors. Instead, the spacecraft will zero in on the ingredients necessary to sustain life, searching for organic compounds and other clues as it peers beneath the ice for suitable conditions.”

The Clipper will undertake a 1.8 billion-mile journey, but it only took an hour for it to be separated from the upper stage of the rocket, float off and message mission control.

“’The science on this is really captivating’, NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free told The Associated Press back at the launch site. Scientists are still learning about the depths of our own ocean, ‘and here we are looking that far out’.”

The mission preparation had to deal with the effect of radiation on its by transistors, that turned out to be more vulnerable to Jupiter’s radiation field than anticipated.

After months reviewing everything, it was concluded in September that the mission could proceed as planned.

[buwaya]

To learn what can be learned about a unique moon of the Solar system, and the Jupiter system. Exploration is not all about finding life. The odds of that are extremely low, in any case.

[SunkenCiv]

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