NASA probe Europa Clipper lifted off from the US Kennedy Space Center on Monday, bound for an icy moon of Jupiter to discover whether it has the ingredients to support life.

Lift-off took place aboard SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket.

The probe is set to reach Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons, in five and a half years.

The mission will allow the US space agency to uncover new details about Europa, which scientists believe could hold an ocean beneath its iced-over surface.

"With Europa Clipper, we're not searching for life on Europa, but we're trying to see if this ocean world is habitable, and that means we're looking for the water," said NASA official Gina DiBraccio, ahead of the launch.

"We're looking for energy sources, and we're really looking for the chemistry there, so that we can understand what habitable environments might be throughout our whole universe," she added.

If life's ingredients are found, another mission would then have to make the journey to try and detect it.

The probe is the largest ever designed by NASA for interplanetary exploration. Europa Clipper is 30 metres wide when its immense solar panels -- designed to capture the weak light that reaches Jupiter -- are fully extended.

The mission will look to determine the structure and composition of Europa's surface, its depth, and even the salinity of its ocean, as well as the way the two interact -- to find out, for example, if water rises to the surface in places.

The aim is to understand whether the three ingredients necessary for life are present: water, energy and certain chemical compounds.

If these conditions exist on Europa, life could be found in the ocean in the form of primitive bacteria, explained Bonnie Buratti, the mission's deputy project scientist.

But the bacteria would likely be too deep for the Europa Clipper to see.

The probe will cover 2.9 billion kilometres during its journey, with arrival expected in April 2030.

The main mission will last another four years.

The probe will make 49 close flybys over Europa, coming as close as 25 kilometres above the surface.

Some 4,000 people have been working on the US$5.2 billion mission for around a decade.

NASA says the investment is justified by the importance of the data that will be collected. (AFP)