The European Space Agency will send a huge mission to Jupiter as early as Thursday morning to examine some of the planet’s most intriguing moons.
The Jupiter Ice Moons Explorer, or JUICE, is the largest deep space mission launched by the European Space Agency and one of the largest by any nation to the outer planets, weighing 6 metric tons. The spacecraft is set to launch from Kourou, French Guiana, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket at 8:15 a.m. ET (12:15 a.m. UTC).
Space Agency Preparing for Launch and Jovian Journey
JUICE arrived at French Guiana on February 9, 2023, and has since gone through a complex set of launch preparation procedures to prepare the spacecraft for launch and travel to the Jovian system. On April 5, the spacecraft was attached to the top of the Ariane 5 upper stage and rolled out to pad ELA-3 on April 11.
The burn will accelerate the JUICE spacecraft, which weighed 5963 kilograms at launch, to a speed of 2.5 kilometers per second, providing enough energy to exit the Earth-Moon system.
The upper stage will shut down at T+25:25, followed by spacecraft separation at T+27:45.
The JUICE team is currently assessing the feasibility of the spacecraft making a flyby of an asteroid known as 223 Rosa. 223 Rosa is slightly smaller than asteroid 21 Lutetia, which the Rosetta expedition flew by before arriving at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
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JUICE’s Jupiter Mission
This flyby would occur during the mission’s last coast, between the spacecraft’s final Earth flyby and arrival at Jupiter.
If teams choose to fly past the asteroid, it will serve as a practice run for JUICE’s impending icy moon flybys.
If all goes as planned, JUICE will arrive at Jupiter in July 2031 with 10 experiments, thanks to hardware contributed by ESA, NASA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI).
After arriving in the Jovian system, the spacecraft is expected to fly by the icy moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa at least 35 times.
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