SpaceX has been awarded a $178 million contract to launch a Europa mission

NASA: One of the goals of the Clipper mission is to produce high-resolution images of Europa's surface.

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Elon Musk's private rocket company, SpaceX, has been awarded a $178 million contract to launch NASA's first mission focused on Jupiter's icy moon Europa, NASA said. It had adequate conditions for life.

And "NASA" said, in a statement posted on the Internet, that the "Falcon Heavy" rocket belonging to the "Space Exploration Technologies" company, owned by Musk, is scheduled to launch the "Europe Clipper" mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.

The contract represents NASA's latest vote of confidence in the Hawthorne, California-based company that has transported many cargoes and astronauts to NASA's International Space Station in recent years.

And in April, SpaceX won a $2.9 billion contract to build a spacecraft to land on the moon, which will carry NASA astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972.

But that contract was put on hold, after two rival aerospace companies, Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, and defense contractor Dynetics, protested the selection of SpecxX.

The Falcon Heavy, a 23-story, partially reusable rocket, is the world's most powerful space launch vehicle today, and transported its first commercial payloads into space in 2019.

The probe will conduct a detailed survey of Jupiter's moon Europa, which is covered in ice, which is slightly smaller than Earth's moon, and is one of the areas that scientists are looking for in the solar system for the possibility of life.

NASA said that among the goals of the Clipper mission is to produce high-resolution images of Europa's surface, determine its composition, search for signs of geological activity, measure the thickness of its ice cover, and determine the depth and salinity of its surroundings.

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