Significant and interesting snippets of news, with a South African angle, from this day in history NASA launches its Europa Clipper spacecraft to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa and determine whether the ocean suspected of being beneath its icy crust is habitable.
Image: Nasa
NASA was due to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa and determine whether the ocean suspected of being beneath its icy crust is habitable.
Europa is of particular interest to scientists because beneath its thick ice shell lies a massive saltwater ocean, which could contain the necessary ingredients for life: water, chemical elements, and energy sources.
Scientists believe that hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor might provide energy that could sustain life, similar to those found in Earth’s deep oceans.
NASA launches its Europa Clipper spacecraft to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa and determine whether the ocean suspected of being beneath its icy crust is habitable.
Image: Graphic News
Europa Clipper, the largest spacecraft that NASA has built for planetary exploration, is equipped with nine scientific instruments, including cameras and spectrometers to understand the moon’s surface and its thin atmosphere; an ice-penetrating radar to map the ice shell in 3D; and a magnetometer to characterise the ocean.
It will take six years for the spacecraft to reach Jupiter, where it will make dozens of flybys of Europa as close as 25 kilometres to map virtually the entire moon.
Europa Clipper is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida soon.
The spacecraft will carry a water-themed plaque with visual representations of the word “water” in 103 languages.