WASHINGTON DC – The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded a $178 million contract to Tesla’s private rocket company, SpaceX, to launch a spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon Europa.
NASA’s mission, known as the Europa Clipper, will launch in October 2024 with the help of Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
The Europa Clipper is designed to fly past Jupiter’s moon Europa 45 times. According to NASA, the Europa Clipper spacecraft will produce high-resolution images of the surface, determine the composition of the moon, and scan for geological activity.
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Currently, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy 23, currently the most powerful operational space launch vehicle, is flying its first commercial payload into orbit in 2019.
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In the 2021 budget, NASA was granted permission to consider commercial alternatives to the agency’s Space Launch System. As a result, he began to officially look for a commercial alternative.
If all goes according to plan, the Clipper spacecraft will take off in October 2024 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and arrive in orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. Europa, Jupiter’s moon has a vast ocean of water under its ice shell and is considered as one of the best places in the solar system to accommodate alien life beyond the earth.
The NASA mission, which will launch on a SpaceX rocket to Jupiter’s moon, will investigate and study Europa in depth during nearly 50 close flights to the moon, with a journey of about four Earth years. n SB/yahoo/N-3
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(SB/N-3)
Editor : Marcellus Widiarto
Writer : Selocahyo Basoeki Utomo S
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