Gravity Assist: Set Sail for Europa, with Bob Pappalardo by NASA

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will give us the most detailed look yet at Jupiter’s extraordinary moon Europa. Smaller than our own Moon, Europa is one of the prime candidates for life beyond Earth because it has a deep ocean under its icy shell. The Europa Clipper spacecraft, named for speedy 19th century merchant ships, will map the surface, learn more about the ocean using ice-penetrating radar, and see if there are plumes of water shooting out from the cracks in the ice, among many other scientific activities. Project scientist Bob Pappalardo at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory discusses this mission as well as the possibility of life on Europa and how it would be able to survive without sunlight.