Pointed in the general direction of Jupiter by a $17.5-billion budget from the White House that includes a specific reference to exploring the Jovian moon Europa, the nation's lead space agency is making plans to fly to Europa.

Believed to hold more water under its frozen crust than exists on Earth, and also revealing from long-distance observations basic elements required for life to exist on Earth, Europa is considered by many astronomers the other place in our immediate solar system with the greatest chance of supporting some sort of life.

Jim Green, planetary science chief for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, told reporters there's no reason to think there's not life on Europa, which is the sixth-largest moon in the solar system and the sixth-closest moon orbiting.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden noted funding included in the 2015 budget for a series of robotic exploration missions to Europa, which agency officials suggest will launch in the mid-2020s.

"We've been thinking about Europa for quite a few years. Then in December things had to change," Green said in a story by Computerworld.

"The ocean there is protected by an ice shell and there's no reason that we believe life couldn't have been generated on Europa," he said. "The real search for aliens is in this solar system. To determine if life exists outside the bounds of Earth's gravity, it's really in places like Mars and Europa and maybe Titan."

Of course, if NASA does find life, either microbial or in some other form, it will literally change the universe as humankind so far knows it.

"If we can find life there, either past life or current life, then that tells us life has to be everywhere in this galaxy," Green said.

"It's an extreme environment, but not as extreme as we think," he said. Europa is "in a temperature range that life, as we know it, is abundant but does it have the right chemicals to create life and feed life? There's no reason to think that the evolution of life in that environment didn't just take off."

Late last year, the Hubble Space Telescope recorded a huge water plume blasting skyward from the south pole of the moon.

Green explained that even though Europa is covered by a shell of ice, strong tidal forces from Jupiter have melted some of that ice and created underneath an expansive, 62-mile-deep ocean, complete with thermal vents, and which covers the entire moon.

"It's a really dynamic region," said Green. "It's a fabulous water world. We believe life probably started in water on this planet. Having billions of years of water on Europa, tells us there's a good chance there's life on Europa now."