NASA to launch 'Possible Life' Jupiter satellite probe on the 15th

NASA's "Europa Clipper," an unmanned probe by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that will investigate whether life can live on Jupiter's moon Europa, will be launched as early as the 15th Korean time.

According to NASA on the 13th local time, the Europa Clipper will be launched on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. on the 14th and 1:06 a.m. on the 15th.

Earlier, NASA scheduled the launch for the 10th but postponed it because Hurricane Milton made landfall.The mission of this spacecraft is to see if Europa has the right conditions for life to live in.

The probe will travel about 2.9 billion kilometers in the five-and-a-half years since leaving Earth, enter Jupiter's orbit in April 2030 and then fly close around Europa to comb its environment.

It plans to survey almost the entire satellite around 49 times at an altitude of 25 km above the surface, the closest distance to Europa.

Europa, Jupiter's moon, is the sixth largest moon in the solar system, with an equatorial diameter of 3,100 kilometers and 90% of the moon's size.

Scientists estimate that a salinity sea exists under a layer of ice 15-25 kilometers above the surface of Europa, which may have an ideal environment for life.

Europa Clipper is expected to find traces of organic compounds that can be components of life using nine instruments, including magnetometers and gravitational gauges to find clues to the ocean and the deep interior below, thermal gauges to determine the temperature of ice, high-resolution cameras and spectrometers, and ice transmission radars.