NASA launches CU Boulder instrument in search for conditions of life on Jupiter moon

DENVER ( KDVR ) — A piece of the University of Colorado Boulder headed to space on Monday morning, joining NASA on its mission to look for conditions that support life on a Jupiter moon.

NASA’s Europa Clipper is a spacecraft that carries instruments to help determine if Jupiter’s moon, Europa, has conditions to support life. NASA said these conditions could include liquid water, an energy source, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur.

Aboard the spacecraft is a piece of equipment known as the SUrface Dust Analyzer, a $52 million piece of equipment designed and built by a team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU Boulder.

The instrument’s mission on the multi-year trip is to collect and analyze particles from around Europa to see if there’s a potential ocean.

Here’s what it looks like:

While the individual piece is compact, NASA said this is part of nine scientific instruments and a gravity experiment, which ends up being the size of a basketball court when the solar arrays are fully deployed.

The spacecraft took off Monday, but it won’t be seen back on Earth for a long time. According to Daniel Strain, a science writer at CU, once the equipment arrives on the moon, which will be in 2031, it will spend over four years looking for conditions to support life.

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