The moons of Jupiter have arrived. The European Space Agency (ESA) will send an orbiter on her eight-year journey to Jupiter to explore his three of the gas giant’s four large moons. The orbiter, called the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), is scheduled to launch on his April 13th from Kourou, French Guiana.
If all goes according to plan, it will launch at 12:15 UTC on top of the Ariane 5 rocket. However, the journey to Jupiter will not be direct – at launch, the spacecraft will not have enough speed to go there directly. Make a series of flybys to Venus. These paths have a sort of slingshot effect, accelerating the Orbiter to reach the Jupiter system.
When it gets there in 2031, it will perform a series of approach passes, this time approaching Jupiter’s moons Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede. These passes help optimize the orbit, but before moving into orbit around Ganymede for the rest of the mission, JUICE will check Europa and Callisto, observe their ice shells, and examine their internal structures. can also be measured.
All three ice-covered moons are thought to contain oceans of liquid water, so one of JUICE’s main goals is to characterize these oceans. It is to find out how deep the ocean is buried under the ice, where it is, and whether it is covered with ice in the right conditions. port life. Equipped with a suite of 10 advanced scientific instruments to study the moons more closely than ever before, as well as observations of Jupiter itself, it is possible that there is life not only in our solar system, but also around similar planets orbiting distant stars. Delve into the possibilities that exist.
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