SpaceX: Elon Musk’s SpaceX has had the very first-mover benefit in the commercialisation of space and is aiming to dominate the private sector in this arena, and now, it has landed a $178 million launch services contract for an upcoming NASA mission. US space agency NASA is hunting to launch its very first mission focusing on Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon, in order to assess irrespective of whether it could have circumstances appropriate for hosting life. The announcement was made by NASA last week, according to a report in The Indian Express, which added that the Europa Clipper mission would take off in October 2024. For the mission, the agency would use SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket and the launch would take spot at NASA’s Florida-based Kennedy Space Centre, it added.
SpaceX has currently worked with NASA in current years to send several cargo payloads, as effectively as astronauts to the International Space Station, and this contract is a different reinforcement of the agency’s self-assurance in Elon Musk’s enterprise.
Earlier this year, the enterprise had also bagged a $2.9 billion contract from NASA to create a lunar lander spacecraft for the Artemis mission, which is anticipated due to the fact it would carry the space agency’s astronauts to the Moon for the very first time in about 4 decades following 1972. However, the contract was suspended following competitors Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos’ space enterprise, and Dynetics Inc protested against the contract.
However, the 23-storey Falcon Heavy, which is a reusable automobile, is at present the most potent operational space launch automobile.
In its Europa Clipper mission, NASA aims to carry out a detailed survey of the icy moon of Jupiter, because at present, it is the major contender in the search for life apart from Earth in the solar technique. Europa is a tiny smaller sized than Earth’s Moon. During the mission, higher-resolution pictures of the moon’s surface would also be captured so that its composition could be determined along with detection of any indicators of geologic activity. Moreover, NASA is also hoping to identify the icy shell’s thickness and the depth as effectively as salinity of the moon’s ocean.