A SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket has been selected to launch a NASA probe to the icy moon on Jupiter

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Underneath Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, NASA predicts, there is a salty ocean with more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. To see if the moon could harbor conditions suitable for life, the agency is preparing to send a spacecraft on an interplanetary mission. Ride for the job? SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

NASA has announced that the $4.25 billion Europa Clipper spacecraft will be launched from a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. This news is a big plus for Elon Musk as it will finally venture even deeper into the solar system.

The Europa Clipper mission is scheduled to launch in October 2024, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with a total value of $178 million. Previously, the mission had been scheduled to launch on a NASA Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, a super-durable expendable launch vehicle that is expected to carry future manned lunar flights for the Artemis program and potential human pursuit missions to Mars.

However, technical and performance issues have plagued the SLS’s base engine, booster, and RS-25 engine programs, causing delays and cost overruns in past years.

While the SLS has yet to be launched for the first time, the Falcon Heavy has been flown on numerous commercial and government missions since its maiden flight in 2018, when it carried Musk’s Tesla Roadster into orbit.

Once launched from a SpaceX rocket, the Europa Clipper probe will orbit Jupiter and make about 40 to 50 close passes over the icy moon, adjusting its flight path for each flight to fly over different regions until it has almost completely surveyed the moon.

The spacecraft will use a complex of research sensors to see if the frozen satellite has conditions suitable for alien life. The mission’s goal is to take high-resolution images of Europa’s surface, determine its composition, search for signs of geological activity, search for underground lakes, and determine how deep the ocean lies beneath the thick frozen crust.

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