NASA's Europa Clipper is designed to seek out conditions suitable for life on an ice-covered moon of Jupiter. On Aug. 14, the spacecraft received a piece of hardware central to that quest: the massive dish-shaped high-gain antenna.

Stretching 10 feet (3 meters) across the spacecraft's body, the high-gain antenna is the largest and most prominent of a suite of antennas on Europa Clipper. The spacecraft will need it as it investigates the ice-cloaked moon that it's named after, Europa, some 444 million miles (715 million kilometers) from Earth. A major mission goal is to learn more about the moon's subsurface ocean, which might harbor a habitable environment.

Once the spacecraft reaches Jupiter, the antenna's radio beam will be narrowly directed toward Earth. Creating that narrow, concentrated beam is what high-gain antennas are all about.