CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft is ready to set sail for Jupiter and its moon Europa, one of the best bets for finding life beyond Earth.

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.

“It’s a chance for us to explore not a world that might have been habitable billions of years ago, but a world that might be habitable today — right now,” said program scientist Curt Niebur.

Its massive solar panels make Clipper the biggest craft built by NASA to investigate another planet. It will take 5 1/2 years to reach Jupiter and will sneak within 16 miles (25 kilometers) of Europa’s surface — considerably closer than any other spacecraft.

Liftoff is targeted for this month aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Mission cost: $5.2 billion.

Europa, the superstar among Jupiter’s many moons

One of Jupiter’s 95 known moons, Europa is almost the size of our own moon. It’s encased in an ice sheet estimated to be 10 miles to 15 miles or more (15 kilometers to 24 kilometers) thick. Scientists believe this frozen crust hides an ocean that could be 80 miles (120 kilometers) or more deep. The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted what appear to be geysers erupting from the surface. Discovered by Galileo in 1610, Europa is one of the four so-called Galilean moons of Jupiter, along with Ganymede, Io and Callisto.

Seeking conditions that support life

What type of life might Europa harbor? Besides water, organic compounds are needed for life as we know it, plus an energy source. In Europa’s case that could be thermal vents on the ocean floor. Deputy project scientist Bonnie Buratti imagines any life would be primitive like the bacterial life that originated in Earth’s deep ocean vents. “We will not know from this mission because we can’t see that deep,” she said. Unlike missions to Mars where habitability is one of many questions, Clipper’s sole job is to establish whether the moon could support life in its ocean or possibly in any pockets of water in the ice.

Supersized spacecraft

When its solar wings and antennas are unfurled, Clipper is about the size of a basketball court — more than 100 feet (30 meters) end to end — and weighs nearly 13,000 pounds (6,000 kilograms). The supersized solar panels are needed because of Jupiter’s distance from the sun. The main body — about the size of a camper — is packed with nine science instruments, including radar that will penetrate the ice, cameras that will map virtually the entire moon and tools to tease out the contents of Europa’s surface and tenuous atmosphere. The name hearkens to the swift sailing ships of centuries past.

Circling Jupiter to fly by Europa

The roundabout trip to Jupiter will span 1.8 billion miles (3 billion kilometers). For extra oomph, the spacecraft will swing past Mars early next year and then Earth in late 2026. It arrives at Jupiter in 2030 and begins science work the next year. While orbiting Jupiter, it will cross paths with Europa 49 times. The mission ends in 2034 with a planned crash into Ganymede — Jupiter’s biggest moon and the solar system’s too.

Europa flybys pose huge radiation risk

There’s more radiation around Jupiter than anywhere else in our solar system, besides the sun. Europa passes through Jupiter’s bands of radiation as it orbits the gas giant, making it especially menacing for spacecraft. That’s why Clipper’s electronics are inside a vault with dense aluminum and zinc walls. All this radiation would nix any life on Europa’s surface. But it could break down water molecules and, perhaps, release oxygen all the way down into the ocean that could possibly fuel sea life.

Earlier this year, NASA was in a panic that the spacecraft’s many transistors might not withstand the intense radiation. But after months of analysis, engineers concluded the mission could proceed as planned.

Other visitors to Jupiter and Europa

NASA’s twin Pioneer spacecraft and then two Voyagers swept past Jupiter in the 1970s. The Voyagers provided the first detailed photos of Europa but from quite a distance. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft had repeated flybys of the moon during the 1990s, passing as close as 124 miles (200 kilometers). Still in action around Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has added to Europa’s photo album. Arriving at Jupiter a year after Clipper will be the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft, launched last year.

Ganymede and other possible ocean worlds

Like Europa, Jupiter’s jumbo moon Ganymede is thought to host an underground ocean. But its frozen shell is much thicker — possibly 100 miles (160 kilometers) thick — making it tougher to probe the environment below. Callisto’s ice sheet may be even thicker, possibly hiding an ocean. Saturn’s moon Enceladus has geysers shooting up, but it’s much farther than Jupiter. Ditto for Saturn’s moon Titan, also suspected of having a subterranean sea. While no ocean worlds have been confirmed beyond our solar system, scientists believe they’re out there — and may even be relatively common.

Messages in a cosmic bottle

Like many robotic explorers before it, Clipper bears messages from Earth. Attached to the electronics vault is a triangular metal plate. On one side is a design labeled “water words” with representations of the word for water in 104 languages. On the opposite side: a poem about the moon by U.S. poet laureate Ada Limon and a silicon chip containing the names of 2.6 million people who signed up to vicariously ride along.

NEW YORK (AP) — A May 5 trial date was set Thursday in Sean “Diddy” Combs’sex trafficking case, and a prosecutor argued that the jailed hip-hop mogul’s lawyers were trying to exclude a “damning piece of evidence” by claiming it was leaked by the government.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson struck back against the defense’s claims during Combs’ first appearance before Manhattan federal court Judge Arun Subramanian, who will preside over his trial. Combs’ mother flew in from Florida for the proceeding, sitting behind him with his children and other family members in the courtroom gallery.

Johnson took issue with the defense lawyers’ argument in a submission late Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security leaked a video to the media of Combs punching and kicking his former protege and girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016.

Combs’ lawyers said the video, aired by CNN in May, and other alleged government leaks “have led to damaging, highly prejudicial pretrial publicity that can only taint the jury pool and deprive Mr. Combs of his right to a fair trial.”

But Johnson urged the judge to see through the defense claims, calling them “baseless and simply a means to try to exclude a damning piece of evidence” from the trial.

“Not a single one of those alleged leaks are from members of the prosecution team,” Johnson said.

Still, Subramanian told defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo to write a proposed order that he would sign instructing lawyers on both sides to comply with rules prohibiting them from publicly disclosing information that could taint a jury.

The prospective order would also restrict what both sides can publicly say about the case — something Johnson said was necessary after Agnifilo characterized Combs’ indictment in a TMZ interview last month as a “takedown of a successful Black man.”

Combs, 54, has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges alleging he coerced and abused women for years with help from a network of associates and employees while silencing victims through blackmail and violence, including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.

Johnson reasserted that the indictment could be updated to add charges or defendants.

Combs, wearing a beige jail jumpsuit, was more engaged and animated during Thursday’s hearing than he had been at two earlier court appearances. When he entered the courtroom, he gave a hearty hug to each of his lawyers and smiled as he spoke with them.

During the proceeding, he turned to attorney Anthony Ricco and whispered in his ear, as Johnson spoke about electronic materials seized from his residences and from him during his arrest.

Ricco said outside the courthouse afterward that Combs is making the best of a difficult situation.

“Dr. King called it the law of unintended consequences,” he said, referring to civil rights leader Martin Luther King. “Sometimes the more you push a person down, the stronger they get.”

Johnson said 96 electronic devices were seized in raids in March on Combs’ residences in Miami and Los Angeles and at an unspecified private airport in Florida. She said another four devices were seized when Combs was arrested last month.

She said eight devices seized in Miami contained over 90 terabytes of information, which she labeled as “extraordinary” as she explained delays in extracting some information for technological reasons.

The judge said Combs can return to court in December unless lawyers agree that hearing is unnecessary.

Much of the hearing featured arguments by lawyers about what is needed to protect an eventual jury from bias, highlighted by Johnson’s claims about the hotel video.

After the video was broadcast, Combs posted a social media video apologizing, saying: “I was disgusted when I did it” and “I’m disgusted now.”

Responding Wednesday night in a court filing to defense claims that the federal government had leaked the video to CNN, prosecutors told the judge that the government was not in possession of the video before it was aired on CNN.

After the video aired, Combs apologized, saying, “I was disgusted when I did it.” His lawyers have described the episode as a lovers’ quarrel. In Combs’ indictment, prosecutors allege he tried to bribe a hotel security staffer to stay mum about the video.

Combs’ lawyers have been trying unsuccessfully to get the Bad Boy Records founder freed on bail. He has been held at a federal jail in Brooklyn since his Sept. 16 arrest.

Two judges have concluded that Combs would be a danger to the community if he is released from the Metropolitan Detention Center, a facility that has been plagued by violence and dysfunction for years. At a bail hearing three weeks ago, a judge rejected a $50 million bail package, including home detention and electronic monitoring, after concluding that Combs was a threat to tamper with witnesses and obstruct a continuing investigation.

In the meantime, Agnifilo said: “We’re making a go of the MDC. The MDC has been very responsive for us.”

In an appeal of the bail rulings to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers for Combs on Tuesday asked a panel of judges to reverse the bail findings, saying the proposed bail package “would plainly stop him from posing a danger to anyone or contacting any witnesses.”

They urged the appeals court to reject the findings of a lower-court judge who they said had “endorsed the government’s exaggerated rhetoric and ordered Mr. Combs detained.”