ESA’s latest interplanetary mission, the JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE), lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 14:14 CEST on April 14, 2023, to begin its eight-year journey to the Jovian system. JUICE it will make detailed observations of the gas giant and its three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. This ambitious mission will characterize these moons with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. JUICE will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jovian system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.
Thanks to the legacy of previous Jupiter missions, planetary reseachers know that three of the gas giant’s largest moons — Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — hold quantities of water buried under their surfaces in volumes far greater than in Earth’s oceans.
These planet-sized moons offer us tantalising hints that conditions for life could exist other than here on our ‘pale blue dot,’ and JUICE is equipped to bring us one step closer to answering this alluring question.
Over the next two-and-half weeks, JUICE will deploy its various antennas and instrument booms, including the 16-m-long radar antenna, 10.6-m-long magnetometer boom, and various other instruments.
An eight-year cruise with four gravity-assist flybys at Earth and Venus will slingshot the spacecraft towards the outer Solar System.
The first flyby in April 2024 will mark a space exploration first: JUICE will perform a lunar-Earth gravity-assist — a flyby of the Moon followed 1.5 days later by one of Earth.
“ESA, with its international partners, is on its way to Jupiter,” said ESA Director General Josef…
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