‘Attempt no landing there.’

Space and/or movie nerds will know that the one body in the solar system that we have been specifically instructed not to visit is the destination of the largest deep-space probe ever launched. Last week NASA, with the assistance of the now indispensable SpaceX, sent the eponymously named Europa Clipper spacecraft on its way to Jupiter. The six-ton wonder of astrophysical engineering will first visit Mars to steal a little energy from the red planet, then return to Earth for another theft of delta-V before making its long voyage out to Jupiter, where it's expected to arrive in 2030.

The spacecraft was originally planned to be flown on NASA's absurdly expensive Space Launch System (SLS), but delays in that program prompted NASA to come to its senses and contract with SpaceX to perform the launch. Launching on the increasingly irrelevant SLS platform would have cost something north of $2 billion, whereas SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful operational rocket, did the job for less than a tenth of that.

Why visit Europa? Jupiter's moon (well, one of almost a hundred Jovian moons) is considered one of the best candidates in the solar system to be a site of extraterrestrial life. There's overwhelming evidence that the moon, despite being so far from the sun, has a large body of liquid saltwater below its icy surface. (Some estimates suggest that there's more liquid water on Europa than on Earth.) Jupiter's immense gravity imposes tidal stresses on the little moon that generate heat -- enough to keep water liquid, perhaps enough to give the moon a molten core.

The question everyone wants answered, of course, is whether this watery little world contains life. Europa Clipper is designed to collect evidence -- albeit circumstantial -- of life, if any can be found. The spacecraft won't actually land, since that was prohibited by extraterrestrial edict in 2010, but will be close enough to directly sample water from the moon if the craft is fortunate enough to fly through one of the water geysers that have been photographed by earlier spacecraft.

I like big rockets and small movies. By the latter of which I mean understated, low-budget flicks with unknown actors doing a lot of talking. The 2013 movie Europa Report is a small science fiction movie in the "found footage" vein that I've enjoyed watching a couple of times. It features one actor I recognize, Michael Nyqvist, who starred in John Wick, so I guess he isn't exactly unknown. I still think of him as the guy from the Dragon Tattoo movies. (I don't know much about cinema.)