NASA Embarks on a Groundbreaking Trip to Jupiter to Explore How Livable Its Moon Is

People have long since wondered if any other planets in our solar system could house us and other life forms, and after decades of research, NASA thinks it might have found one: Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon.

Europa is an icy moon that is reported to have an underground ocean and a potentially liveable environment. To test those theories, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is launching a robotic mission entitled Europa Clipper to Jupiter on Monday, October 14, at 12:06 pm EST. The mission was originally scheduled for Thursday, October 10, but had to be pushed back because of Hurricane Milton.

The mission will consist of a probe being launched into space to see what the icy moon is made of, how internally sound it is and the planet's overall geological makeup. It will be an unmanned mission, so no astronauts will be in the spacecraft and it will all be controlled from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“ It feels surreal . There have been battles at every level, from early on with the initial concept for the mission, through getting approved, through each milestone and overcoming various problems along the way,” the missions project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jordan Evans, said. “To be at this point, watching the team get ready, is incredible.”

For more on the mission and what the team hopes to find, keep scrolling!

What NASA’s trip to Jupiter hopes to discover on Europa

According to Bonnie Buratti, the mission’s deputy project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory , scientists are “looking for a habitable environment .”

“We’re trying to look for the necessities for life, which are liquid water—and we’re pretty sure that’s there—the right chemistry and energy, whether from active geology or something else, that acts almost like a battery to push life along.”

They will also examine the moon's underground ocean, with Buratti explaining, “With the ocean, I think we’ll eventually understand how deep it is. ”

The scientist also noted that they will “ definitely get the thickness of the ice crust and whether there are little ponds in there.”

Timeline of NASA’s Europa mission to Jupiter

There is no end time for the mission. However, scientists did note that it would take six years for the Europa Clipper to travel the 1.8 billion miles and enter Jupiter's orbit, meaning they can't even start looking around until 2030.

Once they get to Jupiter, it will take Europa multiple trips around the planet for scientists to get the full picture.

“Every six times that Europa goes around Jupiter or every 21 days, we’ll be in the exact spot in the universe to be right next to Europa,” Buratti explained. “ And every flyby will be different so that we can get near-global coverage of the moon.”

The scientists also took time to answer the burning question, “Why isn't the spacecraft going to Europa instead of Jupiter?”

Explained Evans, “If we were to just go into orbit around Europa and study it, the radiation would likely kill off even the most radiation-hardened electronics within one to two months.”

Jupiter’s moon Europa’s history

First discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, the moon has fascinated scientists for a long time. Numerous missions to Europa have been made before, but the October 2024 mission will be NASA’s first time studying the moon's underground ocean.

The ocean itself has long since been the reason scientists think Europa is hospitable, with Mohit Melwani Daswani of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory saying in 2020, “We think Europa’s ocean may have been habitable early when it formed because our models show that the ocean’s composition may have been only mildly acidic, containing carbon dioxide and some sulfate salts.”

In that same statement, though, Melwani Daswani warned that “if a place is habitable, it does not mean that it is actually inhabited , just that the conditions could allow for the survival of some extremely hardy forms of life that we know of on Earth.”

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