It won't land, but the robotic spacecraft will fly as close as 16 miles to the moon's frozen surface to probe oceans of liquid water beneath.

Europa Clipper will peer beneath the moon’s icy crust where an ocean is thought to be sloshing fairly close to the surface. It won’t search for life, but rather determine whether conditions there could support it. Another mission would be needed to flush out any microorganisms lurking there.

The puzzling surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa looms large in this reprocessed color view made from images taken by NASA's Galileo