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IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

'This is going to be a mission that's one of the best that NASA has ever done'

• http://www.businessinsider.com, Jessica Orwig

Now, after years of studies to determine which spacecraft is best for the job, NASA is taking steps toward a $2 billion Europa mission — called the Europa Multi-Flyby Mission — that could launch some time in the 2020s and finally settle the debate over whether alien Europans exist.

Mission scientists are still finalizing the design, but at its simplest, the mission will involve a spacecraft that performs dozens of flybys above Europa's surface.

"Anything else we can add to the flyby mission, whether it's a lander or any kind of probe, will make it even more fantastic, but even without those things this is going to be a mission that's one of the best that NASA's ever done in terms of the science return and the excitement it generates," Curt Niebur, who is the lead program scientists for NASA's New Frontiers Program, told Business Insider.


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