Elon Musk's aerospace firm SpaceX has been awarded a $178 million (£129 million) contract for NASA's first mission to Europa, Jupiter's fourth largest moon.
SpaceX will provide 'launch services' for the Europa Clipper mission, which is due to blast off in October 2024 to study Europa through a series of fly-bys, NASA said.
The spacecraft will launch on a Falcon Heavy rocket owned by Musk's company from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the space agency added.
The mission aims to find out if the natural satellite hosts conditions suitable for life using 'a sophisticated suite of science instruments'.
Europa, an icy moon with a hidden subsurface ocean, has a diameter of 1,940 miles (3,100 kilometres) – about 90 per cent the diameter of Earth's moon.
The announcement comes amid an ongoing battle between SpaceX and rival company Blue Origin, owned by fellow billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Bezos published an open letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Monday, offering the NASA billions of dollars for a contract to build a lunar lander for the upcoming Artemis missions.
There is evidence of recent geological formations within the 15 mile thick frozen crust, including small, dark and dome-like features about a mile below the surface
'NASA has selected Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for Earth’s first mission to conduct detailed investigations of Jupiter's moon Europa,' the agency said in a statement.
'The total contract award amount for launch services is approximately $178 million.'
Key mission objectives are producing high-resolution images of Europa's surface, determine its composition and look for signs of recent or ongoing geological activity.
The mission will also measure the thickness of the moon’s icy shell, search for subsurface lakes and determine the depth and salinity of Europa's ocean.
Europa is one of few locations in the Solar System with liquid water, along with Earth and Saturn's moon Enceladus, making it a target of interest for NASA.
Thanks to ground-based telescopes, scientists already
