JUICE

Key facts

Mission & specifications

Mission

JUICE — the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer — is the European Space Agency's flagship mission to the outer Solar System, sent to study a question that would have seemed absurd a generation ago: whether the moons of Jupiter could harbour life. Three of them — Ganymede, Callisto and Europa — are now thought to hide vast oceans of liquid water beneath their icy crusts, together holding far more water than all of Earth's seas. Launched on 14 April 2023, JUICE is on a long, looping cruise through the inner Solar System, using a series of gravity-assist flybys of Earth and Venus to build up the speed it needs to reach Jupiter in 2031. It carries the largest solar arrays ever flown on an interplanetary mission — necessary because sunlight at Jupiter is some twenty-five times fainter than at Earth. Once it arrives, JUICE will spend years touring the Jovian system, making dozens of close flybys of the icy moons and probing beneath their surfaces with ice-penetrating radar. Its grand finale is planned to be unprecedented: in 2034 it is to enter orbit around Ganymede, becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit a moon other than our own. Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System — bigger than the planet Mercury — and the only one known to generate its own magnetic field. JUICE is currently cruising between the planets, years from its destination.

1. 2023Launch toward JupiterLaunch

   ESA's JUICE sets out on an eight-year cruise to the Jovian system.

2. 2024Moon-then-Earth gravity assistFlyby

   JUICE makes a world-first lunar-Earth double flyby to bend its path toward Venus and onward.

3. 2031Arrival at Jupiter (planned)Arrival

   JUICE is planned to enter the Jupiter system and begin its tour of the icy moons.

4. 2034Orbit around Ganymede (planned)Milestone

   JUICE is to become the first spacecraft ever to orbit a moon other than Earth's.

Images

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