Status: 04/14/2023 3:43 p.m
It should be on the road for eight years, cover billions of kilometers and then find out whether life is fundamentally possible on Jupiter’s moons: the ESA probe “Juice” was successfully launched a day late.
The European space probe “Juice” took off in the direction of Jupiter with a day delay. The six-ton probe lifted off at 2:14 p.m. on board an Ariane 5 launch vehicle from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, as shown by images from a live transmission from the European Space Agency’s ESA control center in Darmstadt. From there, the science mission will be directed in the coming years.
According to the project teams, it was on the right trajectory. The start originally planned for Thursday was canceled due to a risk of thunderstorms. It is the most distant target of the European Space Agency ESA so far.
Six billion kilometers route
According to ESA Flight Operations Director Andrea Accomazzo, the probe will travel around six billion kilometers over the next eight years because the route is not straight. In order to gain speed, it has to fly once around Venus and three times around the earth. By July 2031, “Juice” – standing for Jupiter Icy moons Explorer – is expected to enter the orbit of Jupiter. The probe has to withstand temperature differences of up to 500 degrees on its journey.
Researching whether life is fundamentally possible
Jupiter has at least 95 moons and is classified by astronomers as a mini solar system. The probe is designed to analyze Jupiter’s large moons – such as Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. Under the thick ice crusts of the moons water is suspected – the prerequisites for life.
“None of us thinks we’ll find a whale or dolphin there,” said Simon Plum, Head of Mission Operations at the ESA Control Center in Darmstadt, before the launch. “We’re not looking for life,” he said. See if life could be possible there.
Camera, Spectrometer, Radar, Magnetometer
With ten instruments on board, various investigations are possible, including radar and laser measurements. Together with the data and images from the “Janus” camera, a digital 3D model of the moon, which is completely covered with ice, can later be created.
A large number of institutes and organizations are working together on the mission – nine of the instruments were contributed by European partners and one by the US space agency NASA. A self-developed magnetic field measuring device and a camera data processing unit come from the Technical University of Braunschweig. The technology from the Institute of Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics helps to measure the magnetic fields in the Jovian system, especially in the vicinity of Jupiter’s moons, Plum said.
The cost of ESA’s most complex planetary mission to date is around 1.6 billion euros. Of this, Germany makes the largest single contribution, a total of 21 percent.