Europa Clipper has launched: Spacecraft traveling to Jupiter's icy moon to look for signs of life

A NASA mission to explore a Jupiter moon believed to be one of our galaxy's most promising locations to search for life-supporting conditions is at long last underway.

The Europa Clipper launched Monday afternoon aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, which is designed to help propel the spacecraft on a six-year journey to reach its namesake moon, an icy ocean world.

The launch had been scheduled for Thursday until the arrival of Hurricane Milton in Florida forced NASA and SpaceX to delay the takeoff and shelter the large spacecraft in a hangar at the Kennedy Space Center. Once Milton barreled its way out of the state, NASA and SpaceX teams returned to inspect the launch site at the spaceport in Cape Canaveral before later giving a green light for the craft to return to the launchpad ahead of Monday's launch.

Weather conditions were much more favorable Monday as teams completed final preparations before the Clipper commenced on the $5 billion NASA flagship mission, which the U.S. space agency has had in the works for years.

"Today, we embark on a new journey across the solar system in search of the ingredients for life within Jupiter's icy moon," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. "Our next chapter in space exploration has begun."

Here's everything to know about the Clipper mission and its launch over the coast of Florida:

Europa Clipper launches from Kennedy Space Center on SpaceX rocket

The Europa Clipper launched at 12:06 p.m. EDT on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.

Prior to liftoff, the craft had been encapsulated inside a payload fairing designed to protect the Clipper from aerodynamic pressure and heat during launch before it separated and fell back to Earth. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California designed the spacecraft to endure both a launch on the Falcon Heavy rocket as well as the harsh conditions of the vacuum of space, NASA officials have said.

After taking off, 27 Merlin engines on the SpaceX rocket generated more than 5 million pounds of thrust to hurtle the Clipper through the atmosphere and toward Jupiter.

The rocket uses side boosters that were also used during NASA’s Psyche mission that launched about a year ago . Because of the amount of energy Europa Clipper needs to escape Earth's gravity and make it to its interplanetary trajectory, SpaceX does not plan to recover the boosters .

The spacecraft was later able to successfully separate from the rocket's second stage as technicians worked to acquire a signal from the Clipper to verify its health as it spread its massive solar arrays to power itself onward.

Ahead of the Clipper is a 1.8 billion-mile journey to Europa on a trajectory taking it past Mars and then Earth, using the planets’ gravity as a slingshot to add speed to the trek . After journeying for more than five years, the Clipper will fire its engines to enter Jupiter's orbit in April 2030 and will spend four years mapping and scanning above and beneath Europa's surface.

What is the Europa Clipper mission?

The fourth largest of Jupiter’s 95 moons, Europa is an icy celestial body that scientists have long suspected could harbor the conditions necessary to support life beneath its surface. If those life-supporting conditions do indeed exist, then NASA is hoping the Clipper will be able to discover them .

While six spacecraft have visited and imaged Europa since it became one of the first moons found beyond Earth, the best evidence of a subsurface ocean was gathered by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003.

Though Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s own moon and barely one-quarter the diameter of Earth, beneath its cracked, ridged surface is a vast salty ocean that could be up to 100 miles deep – or twice the size of Earth’s own oceans combined. Scientists have long theorized that the icy crust above the ocean conceals evidence of organic compounds and energy sources – the ingredients to life.

Astronomers believe ocean worlds such as Europa are common outside of our solar system, so studying the icy moon could prove to be the first step to understanding how life could exist beyond Earth . But NASA officials have been clear on one point: The Clipper is not looking to find life itself; just the conditions that could support it .

So, how does liquid thrive beneath the surface of a world that scientists estimate is anywhere from about minus-208 to minus-370 degrees Fahrenheit? In a process called tidal flexing, tidal forces from Jupiter's gravity stretch and release Europa's ocean and icy shell above it, creating heat within the celestial body that is enough to maintain liquid beneath an otherwise cold world.

The Clipper is tasked with investigating Europa to find clues of these organic compounds that form life’s building blocks while also sampling any gases ejected from the moon to find evidence that it could be habitable .

Clipper spacecraft is NASA's largest of its kind

Powered by 24 engines, the Clipper has massive solar arrays and radar antennas that make it the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission.

Bigger than a basketball court, the spacecraft extends 100 feet from one end to the other and is about 58 feet across. When fueled up, the Europa Clipper weighed nearly 13,000 pounds at the time of the launch.

Measuring about 46.5 feet long and about 13.5 feet high, the orbiter's solar arrays are big enough to collect enough sunlight to power the craft while near Jupiter – which is more than five times further from the sun than Earth .

Though mission engineers plotted orbits to limit the Clipper's time amid Jupiter's most intense radiation, the spacecraft was also designed with a thick-walled vault made of titanium and aluminum to shield sensitive electronics.

During the course of 49 close flybys of Europa, the Clipper will gather and relay data to help scientists determine, for instance, the subsurface's salinity and how deep the water is. The Europa Clipper's flybys will cover both hemispheres of the moon, the closest of which will be at an altitude of 16 miles above Europa's surface, NASA says .

On board, the Europa Clipper carries nine observational instruments , including cameras needed for high-resolution imaging and an ice-penetrating radar , which will probe Europa’s icy shell for signs of the moon’s suspected ocean. The radar will also study the ice’s structure and thickness, as well as the moon’s surface topography, composition, and roughness.

The instruments, which will also study the moon's geology and atmosphere, will operate simultaneously on every pass so that scientists can layer the data together to paint a full picture of the moon .

NASA mission took years of advocacy, planning

Planning for the Europa Clipper mission took years , requiring a grassroots effort to advocate for Congressional funds to support the endeavor amid a shrinking budget for NASA, according to the Planetary Society .

The Planetary Society, a nonprofit organization promoting space exploration, spent more than a decade advocating for the mission at a time when budget cuts nearly left it shelved, Chief of Space Policy Casey Dreier told USA TODAY.

In a statement, Dreier praised the space agency for "taking a big, bold swing" with the Clipper mission.

"Europa Clipper is one of the most exciting endeavors NASA has attempted," Dreier said in the statement. "Its mission is the essence of a publicly funded space agency: to decrease humanity's ignorance about the cosmos, to marshal the resources necessary to endure the harshest of space environments billions of miles distant, to do so peacefully and with curiosity, and to share the results with the world."

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Europa Clipper has launched: Spacecraft traveling to Jupiter's icy moon to look for signs of life