NASA said Friday it selected SpaceX to launch a planned trip to Jupiter’s ice moon Europa, a huge win for Elon Musk’s company as it looks deeper into the solar system.
The Europa Clipper mission will launch in October 2024 with a Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a total contract value of US $ 178 million.
The mission was to start earlier with NASA’s own Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which was plagued by delays and cost overruns.
While SLS is not yet operational, the Falcon Heavy has been in service on both commercial and government missions since its maiden flight in 2018 when it launched Musk’s own Tesla Roadster into space.
It generates more than five million pounds of thrust (22 million Newtons) as it takes off, which is the equivalent of about eighteen 747 aircraft.
The Europa Clipper Orbiter will make about 40 to 50 tight overflights over Europe to see if the icy moon could provide conditions for life.
Its payload will include cameras and spectrometers to produce high-resolution images and composition maps of the surface and atmosphere, as well as radar to penetrate the ice sheet to look for liquid water underneath.
