Photos: Atlas 5 rollout

Taking a major step toward an eventual robotic mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter believed to harbor ice-locked lakes and a vast sub-surface ocean, NASA has selected nine sophisticated instruments for a solar-powered spacecraft designed to find out whether the hidden realm could support life of some sort, agency officials said Tuesday.

A NASA-funded satellite that launched last year on the third flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket has begun a sequence of thruster firings to begin falling out of orbit after successfully demonstrating the effectiveness of a non-toxic fuel that could fly on future space missions.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will go from Cape Canaveral to low Earth orbit in less than 10 minutes Wednesday with a Dragon capsule heading for the International Space Station carrying more than 5,600 pounds of supplies and experiments.