NASA to launch mission to Jupiter's moon Europa in search for signs of life

NASA is preparing to launch a spacecraft to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, which is considered one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of life.

The Europa Clipper mission will allow the US space agency to uncover new details about the moon, which scientists believe could hold an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

Liftoff is scheduled for "no earlier than" Monday, October 14, from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard a powerful SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, NASA said in a statement.

"Europa is one of the most promising places to look for life beyond Earth," said NASA official Gina DiBraccio at a news conference last month.

The mission will not look directly for signs of life but will instead look to answer the question: Does Europa contain the ingredients that would allow life to be present?

If it does, another mission would then have to make the journey to try and detect it.

"It's a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago," like Mars, Europa Clipper program scientist Curt Niebur told reporters last month, "but a world that might be habitable today, right now."

The probe is the largest ever designed by NASA for interplanetary exploration.

It is 30 meters wide when its immense solar panels -- designed to capture the weak light that reaches Jupiter -- are fully extended.

News.Az