Nasa hopes to send a robot to one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, by the mid-2020s.

The agency has laid out new plans for the mission, which it calls the Europa Clipper, and has asked US authorities for an extra $30 million (£20 million) to fund the project. It has already been allocated $100 million by Congress.

Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) hopes that it will be able to send the robot in the next decade or so, after 15 years spent exploring concepts for the ship. Many of the ideas were too big or too expensive, but Nasa believes that it has found the right model.

On board the ship will likely be a range of scientific instruments. Those could include a radar to explore underneath the icy crust of the moon and see how thick it is, a camera that would take high-definition pictures of the surface and sensors that would explore the atmosphere of the moon.

Scientists think that beneath the icy crust, there could be another layer that might support life. The conditions could be akin to those that some living things, known as extremophiles because they can live in such harsh conditions, inhabit on Earth.

Nasa hopes that it can fly past Europe about 45 times, between 1700 miles and 16 miles from its surface.

The ship is called clipper after the small clipper ships that used to quickly sail around the Earth in the 19 century, carrying freight over the trade routes.

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Belfast Telegraph