Europa Clipper

Europa Clipper is a NASA robotic space probe launched on October 14, 2024, to study Jupiter moon Europa and assess whether its subsurface ocean, believed to lie beneath an icy shell, could have conditions suitable for life. Rather than orbiting Europa directly, where Jupiter intense radiation would quickly damage its instruments, the spacecraft is designed to orbit Jupiter and make dozens of close flybys of the moon, mapping its surface and probing the composition and depth of its ice and ocean. It is among the largest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission, with solar arrays spanning about thirty meters.