NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft successfully tested its ice-penetrating radar system during a close flyby of Mars earlier this year, proving that the probe is ready for its main mission: peering beneath the frozen crust of Jupiter's moon Europa to search for signs of subsurface liquid water and possibly even determine if those oceans have the ingredients to form and sustain life.
Launched in October 2024, Europa Clipper is on a 1.8-billion-mile (2.9-billion-kilometer) journey to study Jupiter and its moons. On March 1, it flew within 550 miles (884 kilometers) of Mars' surface in a planned gravity assist maneuver to fine-tune its trajectory.
