The European Space Agency (ESA) launches this Thursday the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission to study the icy moons of Jupiter. The launch is scheduled for 1:15 p.m. (Portuguese time), from the Kourou Space Center, in the overseas territory of French Guiana.
The satellite is expected to reach Jupiter only in 2031, eight years from now. The main objectives of the ESA mission are to observe the planet’s moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, explore the planet’s “complex environment” and search for signs of life on Jupiter.
“Juice’s mission will study Jupiter’s hidden ocean reservoirs, mapping its icy layers and probing its interiors. While its oceans are of key interest to Juice, each moon is individually interesting as well: Callisto represents the ancient world of the solar system. Jupiter primitive, Europa seems to have a younger and more active surface that releases water into space and Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, is truly unique.
The planet Jupiter has “an extremely complex space environment, with the planet’s atmosphere, magnetism, moons, and dust rings interacting with each other.”
“By characterizing and exploring how all these components work together, Juice will help to understand not only what gas giant systems look like, but also how habitable places can arise in Jupiter-like systems,” says the European Space Agency.
Juice, a mission with a Portuguese presence
The president of the Portuguese Space Agency is in French Guiana and will attend the launch. Speaking to TSFRicardo Conde reveals details of this “scientific mission”.
“This is a scientific mission and one that, in the end, will try to answer if, in fact, there is life in our solar system, because this is a mission that looks for signatures for evidence of life in what are called “Icy Moons”, the moons of Jupiter. It is a mission that brings together the 22 countries that make up ESA, Portugal is present there through some companies, at this moment, seven companies that also develop technological capacities to compose what this mission is”, he explains Ricardo Count.
The president of Portugal Space also highlighted the work of Portuguese companies and the contribution of our country to this mission, one of the largest in recent years by ESA.
“Portugal participates with seven companies that develop from thermal protection, targeting antenna systems or radiation monitors. We have a global value of around 5.4 million euros and it is this volume that makes Portugal participate in this mission”, he adds.
The Juice satellite will have Bruno Sousa as flight director. The Portuguese has been at ESA for more than 20 years and will follow all the steps of the mission from Germany, as revealed by Ricardo Conde
“Bruno is a person who has been at ESA for a long time and is in charge of mission control. He is responsible for several other missions, not just this one, and now Bruno will be busy for 12 years, which is the lifetime of the mission”. From the moment of launch, there is a whole phase in which these equipments are going to be injected into an orbit to then make an entire interplanetary trip”, he adds.
Once it reaches the planet, eight years from now, in 2031, the Juice mission will spend three and a half years in the Jupiter system, and in the final phase of its exploration, it will enter orbit around the largest moon, Ganymede.
The ESA mission, which cost around 1,600 million euros and had the collaboration of the North American (NASA), Japanese (JAXA) and Israeli (ISA) space agencies in terms of instrumentation and hardware, is expected to end in September 2035.
The satellite includes components manufactured by the Portuguese companies Efacec, LusoSpace, Active Space Technologies, Deimos Engenharia and FHP – Frezite High Performance.
The first scientific data is expected in 2032.
Jupiter is 11 times bigger than Earth. Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and has a large ocean below its surface.
Source: TSF
