JUICE successfully launched from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on April 14, 2023, at 8:14 a.m. EDT (1214 GMT).
JUICE is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission that will examine Jupiter and three of its icy moons: Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede.
It will undertake detailed observations of Jupiter and its three huge ocean-bearing moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, after an eight-year voyage. This ambitious mission will characterize these moons using a sophisticated suite of remote sensing, geophysical, and in situ equipment in order to learn more about these enticing destinations as potential habitats for past or current life. Juice will conduct in-depth observations of Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation, and plasma environments, as well as its interactions with its moons, in order to explore the Jupiter system as a template for gas giant systems throughout the Universe.
Juice has two monitoring cameras mounted on the spacecraft’s ‘body’ to record various deployments. The pictures are 1024 × 1024 pixel photos. The photographs in this gallery have been gently treated with a preliminary color adjustment.
Once in the Jovian system in 2031, a scientific camera will be employed to capture high-resolution photographs of Jupiter and its cold moons.
JMC1 is placed on the front of the spaceship and stares diagonally up into a field of view that includes a portion of one of the solar arrays and will ultimately include deployed antennas.
The top-mounted Juice Monitoring Camera 2 (JMC2) monitors the multi-stage deployment of the 16-meter-long Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) antenna. RIME is an ice-penetrating radar that will be used to remotely investigate the subsurface structure of Jupiter’s big moons.
RIME is now in a stowed state; it will unfurl in sections over the next few days. Images will be taken to document the entire deployment.
JUICE’s mission to Jupiter will take seven and a half years and will include three returns to Earth, where the spacecraft will get gravity aids from our planet to help it modify its course. At Venus, the spacecraft will also undergo one of these maneuvers.
The spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter in December 2031 and will orbit the planet for three years, conducting close flybys of three of its major moons: Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. The probe will then enter orbit around Ganymede, the biggest moon.