On April 14, 2023, the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), also known as the first European mission to Jupiter, from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana at 12:14pm UTC (8:14am ET). The mission, which has been in the planning for over a decade, aims to gain new insights into the Jovian system, with a particular emphasis on the three icy moons: Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
The launch will be streamed live by the ESA’s WEB TV from 11:45pm UTC (7:45am ET). Assuming everything goes well, JUICE will be released 28 minutes after the launch, starting its journey to Jupiter. The spacecraft will take about eight years to reach Jupiter, during which it will conduct three flybys of Earth (the last one in 2029), one of Venus, and another of asteroid 223 Rosa in the main Asteroid Belt.
Once JUICE reaches Jupiter, it will perform 35 flybys of Jupiter’s moons – Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto before entering orbit around Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, around 2033. During its eight-year mission, JUICE will investigate the potential habitability of these icy moons, studying their surfaces and subsurface oceans, and investigating their magnetic fields, which make them unique in the Solar System.
JUICE’s primary goal is to study what scientists call “habitable places” – places around a planet like Jupiter where habitable conditions or conditions interesting for life may exist. There is evidence to suggest that there is a lot of liquid underneath the surfaces of some of these icy moons, and if this is the case, JUICE will be able to detect it. The spacecraft will also study Jupiter as a whole, including its moons, dust rings, and huge magnetic field that rotates very quickly. The information gathered by the mission will be used to develop a model for exoplanets and extrasolar systems.
Dr Olivier Witasse, a planetary scientist working on the scientific aspects of the mission, told IFLScience that the scientific investigations are thrilling, and the results could lead to groundbreaking discoveries in the 2030s, including evidence of life beyond Earth. The mission is a costly endeavour, with the JUICE craft costing around €1.6 billion to build. Roughly €600 million of the build cost was spent on 10 high tech pieces of equipment for the probe, including a special camera, spectrometer, and a magnetometer designed to measure the magnetic fields of Jupiter and its moons.
The JUICE mission represents a significant step forward for European space exploration and has the potential to reveal new information about our solar system and beyond. The launch delay due to lightning concerns may have caused some disappointment, but the excitement around the mission remains high. The live stream of the launch and the subsequent journey to Jupiter will undoubtedly attract a wide audience, as people around the world wait to see what new discoveries JUICE will bring back to Earth.
