Europa Clipper, a spacecraft designed to investigate Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and its potential to support life, arrived in Florida on Thursday, May 23. The spacecraft, assembled at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, landed aboard a United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft at the Launch and Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

The mission aims to gather detailed measurements of the moon’s surface, interior, and space environment by performing approximately 50 close flybys, some as low as 16 miles (25 kilometers) from the surface of , which holds a global ocean underneath its ice shell.

“My job for Europa Clipper is to ensure the team meets all the ground and flight requirements to place the spacecraft in the proper orbit to initiate the long journey to Jupiter,” said Armando Piloto, Europa Clipper mission manager for . “The team is excited that the spacecraft is in Florida for processing. We’re pairing Europa Clipper with a fully expendable SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to ensure it provides the required performance to explore a destination very far away from Earth.”