What will NASA's Europa Clipper discover at Jupiter's icy moon?

The answer

NASA's Europa Clipper, launched on October 14, 2024, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, is the largest spacecraft ever built for a planetary mission, with a 30.5-meter solar array wingspan. It will arrive at Jupiter in April 2030 and perform 49 close flybys of Europa, approaching as close as 25 kilometers above the surface. Europa harbors a subsurface ocean beneath 15-25 kilometers of ice, containing an estimated two to three times the water in all of Earth's oceans. The spacecraft carries nine instruments including ice-penetrating radar (REASON), a mass spectrometer to analyze surface material, and a thermal emission imaging system. Scientists are particularly interested in 'chaos terrains' where warm water may have reached the surface, potentially carrying biosignatures from the ocean below.