After the Moon and Mars, now it’s Jupiter’s turn. In a few days, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, a 1.6 billion euro probe with a very specific goal: to find signs of life on other worlds in our solar system. According to experts, it is around some planets further away from the Earth – such as the giants Jupiter and Saturn – that the most abundant water reserves in our galaxy are hidden. And «Juice», as it has been renamed, is the first mission launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) precisely to explore the most remote corners of our solar system. “We would like to see if there are places around Jupiter where life could have started. We have to find a place with internal energy and liquid water,” explained al Guardian Olivier Witasse, one of the scientists who set up the mission. On the gas planet’s icy moons, Witasse added, “we have good reason to believe that there is more water than on Earth.”
The launch of the mission
The launch of Juice by ESA scientists will take place on 13 April from the European spaceport in Kourou, in French Guiana. The mission objectives are different. Primarily, explains the European Space Agency, “to carry out detailed observations” of Jupiter and its three large oceanic moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. After that, the probe “will deeply explore Jupiter’s complex environment and study the wider system as an archetype for gas giants throughout the Universe”. Before seeing Juice arrive at his destination, she will have to wait some more time. If for trips to Mars the average journey time is about 8 months, those to Jupiter take 8 years. According to ESA estimates, the probe will enter the orbit of the gaseous planet in July 2031. Three years later, Juice will enter a permanent orbit around Ganymede. It will be the first time that a spacecraft will maintain an orbit around a moon other than ours. ESA’s discoveries will then be added to those of NASA, which in 2024 will launch one of its probes – renamed Europa Clipper – in the direction of Jupiter.
Photo credits: Twitter/Esa
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