Europa was a Pheonician princess who was abducted and taken to Crete by Zeus. He was disguised as a white bull. Europa means wide face, and is considered to refer to the full moon.
After Europa the princess comes Europe the continent. The first reference as a geographic term is by Homer, The Greeks divided the world into Europe, Asia and Libya.
Then we move to space and Europa is one of the four moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo in 1610. It was named after the Phoenician princess Europa. The Galiliean satellites were all named after lovers of Zeus. Supposedly he had quite a few, so it isn't clear how they chose just four. The other moons are Io, Ganymede and Callisto.
NASA's spacecraft searching for life beyond Earth is named the Europa Clipper. Its main purpose is to determine whether there are places below the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa that could support life. Then couldn't they be named Europeans?
