Once at its destination, Europa will use the antenna to continue communicating with Nasa, which will be roughly 444 million miles away.

The spacecraft is designed to seek out conditions suitable for life on an ice-covered moon of Jupiter. Europa has the smoothest surface of any known solid object in the solar system, which has led scientists to hypothesise that a water ocean exists beneath the icy surface, conceivably harbouring extraterrestrial life.

The massive, dish-shaped high-gain antenna stretches 3m across the spacecraft’s body and is the largest and most prominent of its suite of antennas.

Once the spacecraft reaches Jupiter, the antenna’s radio beam will be narrowly directed towards Earth. High-gain antennas are designed to create narrow beams by focusing their power, allowing the spacecraft to transmit signals back to Nasa’s Deep Space Network on Earth.

The antenna will stream most of that data over the course of 33 to 52 minutes. The strength...