FOX Business Charlie Gasparino discusses Tesla CEO Elon Musk statement on Starlink. NASAs (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Southern California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has granted SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) with the launch services contract for the Earths first objective to perform comprehensive examinations of Europa. The “Europa Clipper” mission is set for October 2024 and NASA said in a Friday release that the spacecraft will launch on a Falcon Heavy rocket from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. FAA SAYS JEFF BEZOS NOT AN ASTRONAUT BASED ON NEW CRITERIAThe agreement award is around $178 million dollars. Researchers at the firm will check out whether Jupiters icy moon, which is about 90% the size of Earths moon, could host conditions ideal for life. The world– found initially by well known astronomer Galileo Galilei– reveals strong evidence for an ocean of salty water beneath the planets crust, believed to contain two times as much water as Earths oceans combined.GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERENASA believes that the moons ice shell is around 10 to 15 miles thick and its internal ocean is estimated to be around 40 to 100 miles deep.The mission will send out Europa Clipper to orbit around Jupiter to carry out close flybys of Europa on an elliptical course. The orbiters suite of science instruments will assist to determine the oceans depth and salinity and the thickness of its icy shell, map surface geology and composition, search for plumes of water vapor that could be emitted from Europas crust and subsurface lakes and produce high-resolution images of its surface area. This color view of Jupiters moon Europa was captured by NASAs Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. Scientists are studying processes that impact the surface area as they prepare to explore the icy body. (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute)JPL notes that understanding Europa habitability will help astrobiologists to better comprehend how life developed on Earth roughly 382 million miles away, in addition to efforts to discover life beyond the blue marble.While JPL leads the advancement of the Europa Clipper mission in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, for NASAs Science Mission Directorate in Washington, NASAs Kennedy-based Launch Services Program will manage the Europa Clipper launch service. CLICK ON THIS LINK TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS Additionally, the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will orchestrate program management of the Europa Clipper objective.