

If they're there, according to NASA, Europa life forms could range from microbes to more complex beings. This NASA illustration shows what the Europa Clipper will look like at the icy moon with Jupiter in the background, all solar arrays extended. Plus, they've collected a wealth of concrete proof that Europa has a significant amount of water - about twice as much as all of Earth's oceans combined. Alien life.Įxperts have found the companion of Jupiter, which is about 90% the size of our own moon, to have signs of just the right chemical elements, such as carbon and hydrogen, to host living beings. It's simply because study after study continues to offer evidence that this frigid floating sphere has ultra-promising conditions to support life. The smallest of Jupiter's four Galilean moons, Europa is an extremely talked-about world in the science community. Why does Europa lead the quest to find aliens? "This delivery brings us one step closer to launch and the Europa Clipper science investigation," Jordan Evans, mission project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.įurther feeding the excitement, the agency even shared a mesmerizing time-lapse video of the Clipper being transported from its birthplace at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to the snowy-white clean rooms of of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman On Tuesday, NASA released a few long-awaited images of the Clipper's completed main body, calling this a "huge milestone" for the ambitious mission.Įngineers and technicians inspect the main body of NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft.

It's named the Clipper, and it's bound for Jupiter's icy moon Europa. It's the largest NASA spacecraft ever developed for a planetary mission, and in October 2024, it's scheduled to voyage toward an extraterrestrial world many scientists deeply believe could host alien life. It stands about as high as a regulation basketball hoop and will have solar arrays that, when extended, would fill an entire basketball court.

It's an aluminum cylinder about the size of an SUV. It's a massive device that'll be programmed to fly by and investigate Jupiter's icy moon Europa, a foreign world that scientists think could host extraterrestrial life. NASA has completed building the main body of the Europa Clipper spacecraft.
