SpaceXs Elon Musk provides an upgrade on the businesss Mars rocket Starship in Boca Chica, Texas U.S. September 28, 2019. REUTERS/Callaghan OHareLOS ANGELES, July 23 (Reuters) – Elon Musks personal rocket business SpaceX was granted a $178 million launch services contract for NASAs first mission concentrating on Jupiters icy moon Europa and whether it might host conditions suitable for life, the space firm stated on Friday.The Europa Clipper mission is due for blastoff in October 2024 on a Falcon Heavy rocket owned by Musks business, Space Exploration Technologies Corp, from NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA stated in a declaration published online.The agreement marked NASAs newest vote of self-confidence in the Hawthorne, California-based company, which has actually carried a number of freight payloads and astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA in current years.In April, SpaceX was awarded a $2.9 billion contract to develop the lunar lander spacecraft for the prepared Artemis program that would carry NASA astronauts back to the moon for the very first time because 1972. That agreement was suspended after 2 rival area companies, Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin and defense professional Dynetics Inc, protested versus the SpaceX selection.The businesss partly recyclable 23-story Falcon Heavy, presently the most powerful operational area launch vehicle in the world, flew its first business payload into orbit in 2019. NASA did not state what other companies may have bid on the Europa Clipper launch contract.The probe is to carry out an in-depth study of the ice-covered Jovian satellite, which is a bit smaller than Earths moon and is a prominent candidate in the look for life elsewhere in the solar system.A bend in Europas electromagnetic field observed by NASAs Galileo spacecraft in 1997 appeared to have been brought on by a geyser gushing through the moons frozen crust from a huge subsurface ocean, scientists concluded in 2018. Those findings supported other evidence of Europa plumes.Among the Clipper missions goals are to produce high-resolution images of Europas surface area, identify its composition, look for signs of geologic activity, measure the density of its icy shell and figure out the depth and salinity of its ocean, NASA said.Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Edmund KlamannOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.