The search for life on Europa has officially begun 🌱🧊

Could life be waiting for us on Jupiter’s icy moon? NASA’s latest launch will soon find out

Scientists have long speculated there’s one place in our solar system that’s most likely to support present life, and it’s not Mars. It’s Europa, Jupiter’s icy ocean moon 🧊🌊

Earlier this week, NASA officially launched the Europa Clipper spacecraft, making history as the first mission to conduct a detailed study of the mysterious world:

🔷 Europa is unique because it currently has the three ingredients needed for life as we know it to exist: temperatures that allow liquid water, energy input (like sunlight), and the presence of carbon-based molecules.

🔷 Considering between 50%-80% of life on Earth is in our oceans, an oceanic moon with carbon and energy sounds promising.

🔷 We got our first glimpse of Europa in 1973 when Pioneer 10 captured images of the moon’s surface, providing evidence that Europa might be geologically active today. 

🔷 Since then, six spacecraft have studied Europa. Unlike earlier missions, however, Europa Clipper was specifically built to study ice-covered ocean worlds. 

🔷 Europa will arrive in April 2030 and conduct 49 close flybys.

The goal? To determine if Europa has conditions suitable to support life 🌱

After ditching its astronauts in space, Boeing’s Starliner missions are now officially on hold

Actions have consequences. In the case of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, this means abandoning your astronauts in space can earn a pause on future NASA missions 🫠

👉 When Boeing launched its Starliner spacecraft with two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in June 2024, the trip was supposed to be eight days.

👉 Although Starliner returned to Earth (following technical difficulties), the NASA astronauts are still in space and won’t get a ride home until February. ~8 months after they were supposed to return.

👉 The mission was just a Crew Flight Test mission, but for obvious reasons, NASA concluded in July that the spacecraft would not be certified in time for its 2025 missions. 

👉 This week, NASA announced that it will use SpaceX instead of Boeing for its next two International Space Station missions.

👉 The news is a blow to Boeing, which was, until recently, considered a force in the industry compared to SpaceX. Both were awarded NASA contracts in 2014, but in the last four years, SpaceX has exceeded expectations while Boeing has fallen behind.

Is NASA completely done with Boeing? No. Boeing still has a $4.3B contract to get through.

But does this point to a major power shakeup in the aerospace industry? Absolutely.

Moral of the story, don’t leave your astronauts in space and expect to get away with it 🙃

NASA astronauts to wear Prada on the Moon because… why not?

When NASA astronauts set foot on the Moon in early 2026, they’ll be decked out in head-to-toe Prada. Everyone deserves to feel fancy every once in a while, astronauts included 🧑‍🚀

The sleek design comes from Axiom Space, a NASA contractor tasked with creating a new spacesuit for Artemis 3, the first mission to put a man on the Moon since 1972 🌝

Axiom partnered with Prada to blend ‘engineering, science, and art,’ but a fashion upgrade isn’t the only new element. The suit will also allow astronauts to spacewalk for eight hours a day with enhanced mobility and extra protection against extreme temperatures. 

If you’re making an epic comeback somewhere you haven’t been for half a century, might as well serve a look 💁

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