NASA’s Europa Clipper, aiming to lift off for Jupiter’s icy moon in October, will carry names, poetry and other symbols of humanity’s search for life beyond Earth.
Astrobiologists suspect there could be alien life just out of reach in our solar system, in oceans hidden beneath icy crusts on moons circling Jupiter and Saturn. But unlike the surface of Mars, which can be explored by rovers and landers, these mysterious oceans are currently inaccessible to us. In an effort to change that, researchers convened this year to design a novel mission that could finally reveal what’s in those distant water worlds.