The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE): Searching for a moon so big and so big that it could make a trip to Jupiter
There are likely some special characteristics for Ganymede. It is the biggest moon in the entire solar system, bigger than Mercury and our moon combined. It harbors six times as much liquid water as Earth, but could be hidden beneath 100 miles of ice. Ganymede’s also unique in possessing an iron core that generates the moon’s own magnetic field—the only rocky body in the solar system to do so, other than Mercury and Earth. Its magnetic field may have originated from its proximity to Jupiter, which could have caused a tidal flexing of its internal structure.
The gas giant has been an object of fascination since 1610 when Galileo Galilei discovered its major moons. To this day, people scan the night sky for the planet and for Venus. Now space agencies are giving the Jovian system its closest look yet. “I think Jupiter is becoming a campaign target, like Mars has been for quite a while,” Bolton says. It is not easy to get to this planet, which has fascinated us for a long time. It would be great to have several space crafts there at once.
“Our radiometer saw through the ice on Europa and Ganymede for the first time, and their radar instrument is designed to do that in a different way,” says Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator and an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute. We can look back at the data from the data set.
After it finished its work, Galileo dived into the depths of Jupiter and burned up in its atmosphere. In the year 2017, Cassini concluded its mission when it plunged intoSaturn, collecting data and preventing space trash. Juice will most likely plummet into the ocean at the end of its lifespan in a few years.
The Ariane 5 rocket which will launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) craft in less than two weeks is currently being positioned at the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. “There is no launch window, only one launch instant,” said programme director and launch operator Véronique Loisel at Arianespace, during a press briefing in Kourou last week.
It takes a precise lift-off time to insert the spacecraft into the correct path around the Sun. If the launch has to be postponed because of poor weather or other reasons, the next opportunity will come around 24 hours later.
Double fly-by of the European Space Agency probe towards the outer Solar System: A briefing for ESA payload-system engineer Alessandro Atzei
If everything goes according to plan, the European Space Agency probe will circle back and pass close to the Earth and the Moon in a year, which will help to slingshot the spacecraft towards the outer Solar System. This double fly-by will require “the most accurate gravity-assist manoeuvre ever done”, said ESA payload-system engineer Alessandro Atzei at the briefing. Atzei is based at the agency’s European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.