A message in a bottle this week on planetary radio.

I'm Sarah Al Ahmed of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.

NASA's Europa Clipper mission is almost ready for its historic trip to the Jovian system.

This week my colleague Merck Boyan, a visual storyteller at the Planetary Society, takes you into the

clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to speak with the team members about the spacecraft.

Then Bob Popolardo, the project scientist for Europa Clipper, visits our headquarters in Pasadena, California,

to share the story of the mission's vault plate,

humanity's next collection of messages to another world.

Our chief scientist Bruce Betts joins me in the end for What's Up

and a discussion of our favorite messages from Earth.

If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries,

make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform.

By subscribing, you'll never miss an

episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the Cosmos and are placed

within it. You might notice that I'm a little croaky today, but don't worry, that's just because I spent the last day at the U.S. Congress speaking with representatives about space exploration.

I might have used my voice up a little, but I tell you, that was an adventure, and I'm going to share that with everyone on a future show.

But in the meantime, we'll talk about Europa Clipper.

Think about what life needs to thrive here on Earth.

A spark of energy, a splash of liquid water, and the chemical building blocks to

form complex organic molecules. Now imagine a world not too far from us

where all of these ingredients might exist. Jupiter's icy moon Europa.

Incased in a thick shell of ice beneath which lies a deep dark ocean.

...