The launch window is scheduled for next April and the probe will reach Jupiter in July 2031.
Just like 2022, 2023 will be a key year for space exploration. One of the important quotes is the launch of the European mission JuiceThat will study Jupiter and its three large icy moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europawhich might hide oceans beneath its surface.
Juiceequipped with ten instruments and led by the European Space Agency (ESA), will help scientists better understand how gas giants and their moons formed, and their ability to support life. The launch window is scheduled for next April and the probe will reach Jupiter in July 2031.
The general theme of Juice is the emergence of potential habitable worlds around gas giant planets. Only one body is known to have experienced the appearance of life, the Earth. Is the origin of life exclusive to our planet or might it occur in other parts of the Solar System or beyond? the ESA asks on its website.
Juice, whose prime contractor is Airbus, will explore habitable zones – zones where an Earth-like planet might support liquid water if it existed – characterizing the oceans, ice sheets, composition, surface, environment and activity. of Ganymede, Europa and Callisto.
Besides, will analyze the Jupiter system in a broad sensedetermining the characteristics of its turbulent atmosphere, the magnetic environment, the ring system and other satellites of the planet, including Io.
The mission is led by ESA and has the collaboration of the NASAwhich has contributed one of the instruments (UVS) and the «hardware» for others; The Japanese space agency JAXA also participates, also with the “hardware” of various instruments.
The launch will take place from Kourú, in French Guiana, on an Ariane 5 rocket; Juice, equipped with ten solar panels, will spend approximately eight years traveling to Jupiter.
To meet his scientific objectives during the almost four years that he will do research, the mission is loaded with a suite of local, geophysical and remote sensing instruments.
The space probe will fly over the moon Callisto, which is the object with the largest number of craters in the Solar System, a dozen times, details Alter Technology, which is participating in the mission. It will also fly over Europa twice in order to make the first measurements of the thickness of its icy crust.
Juice will end up entering the orbit of Ganymedewhere he will study the icy surface of the moon and its internal structure, including the ocean below it.
The mission will investigate, on the one hand, the appearance of habitable worlds around gas giants and, on the other, the Jupiter system as an archetype of the numerous giant exoplanets that orbit other stars, summarizes the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA) on its website. -CSIC), in Spain, which is also in the mission.
