Europe’s Juice space mission blasts off toward Jupiter

The ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission — ‘Juice’ — successfully launched today from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.    

The launch was supposed to take place yesterday but was postponed due to poor weather conditions. 

Today, the stars aligned and Juice was successfully blasted into orbit at approximately 14:19 CEST.

It took only two minutes for the Ariane 5 rocket to transport Juice into space, shortly after which it separated from the satellite, which now begins its 8-year journey to Jupiter.

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Juice will make the 6.6 billion km trip to study three of Jupiter’s 92 known moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. Each of these worlds has an ocean of water hidden underneath an icy shell — an important target for astronomers searching for life beyond Earth.  

In the two weeks after launch, the satellite will deploy all of its antennas and instrument booms. This will be followed by a three-month long period where all of the spacecraft’s scientific instruments will be commissioned. 

It will take even longer for its first fly-by, which is only set for August 2024. At that time, it will fly by the Moon and then Earth about one and a half days later. The satellite will take advantage of the Earth-Moon gravitational field to sling itself on course for Jupiter. 

Juice is set to arrive at Jupiter in July 2031. Once it arrives it will spend three and a half years orbiting the gas giant and making close fly-bys of three of its moons. 

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