Nasa successfully launched the Europa Clipper spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 12:06 local time (16:06 GMT) after Hurricane Milton caused a delay last week.
The mission is set to travel 1.8 billion miles to Europa, a mysterious icy moon orbiting Jupiter, where scientists believe a vast ocean may exist beneath the surface, possibly containing twice as much water as Earth.
The spacecraft is expected to arrive in 2030, overtaking a European mission launched last year. The findings from the Europa Clipper mission could significantly alter what we know about life beyond Earth.
Scientists first suspected Europa’s potential to support life in the 1970s, and now, decades later, the Clipper is equipped with cutting-edge technology to explore the moon’s subsurface ocean and search for signs of habitability.