Today (March 1), NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will fly past Mars, gliding just 550 miles (884 kilometers) above the Red Planet's surface. This maneuver is designed to adjust the spacecraft's trajectory and position it for a critical phase in its 1.8-billion-mile (2.9-billion-kilometer) trek to the Jupiter system.
The probe's destination is Europa, a moon of Jupiter coated with a shell of ice that conceals a vast, presumably salty ocean. Scientists suspect the moon could have the ingredients needed for life as we know it, and the $5.2 billion Europa Clipper is NASA's first mission dedicated to gathering data that will help scientists determine whether Europa, and other ocean worlds like it, could indeed be habitable.
