Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer

Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is a space probe made by the European Space Agency that will explore Jupiter's major moons, mostly just Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. It is powered by solar panels, like NASA's Juno (spacecraft).^[1]

The spacecraft launched on 14 April 2023. It will reach Jupiter in July 2031 after four gravity assists and eight years of travel.^[2]

It will fly near the moons before going into orbit around Ganymede.^[3]

Instruments onboard JUICE^[4]

JUICE under- construction

JANUS- An optical camera system

MAJIS- Moon and Jupiter imaging Spectrometer

GALA- Ganymede laser Altimeter

J-Mag- A magnetometer for JUICE

RPWI- Radio & Plasma Wave Investigation

UVS- UV imaging Spectrograph

SWI- Sub-millimeter Wave Instrument

RIME- Radar for Icy Moons Exploration

PEP- Particle Environment Package

3GM- Gravity & Geophysics of Jupiter and Galilean Moons

History

Juice builds on the previously proposed Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM-Laplace), a planned collaborative mission between ESA and NASA that would have carried out an in-depth study of the Jovian system and its icy moons. It is now foreseen that the Juice and NASA Europa Clipper spacecraft will be exploring the Jovian system simultaneously.^[4]

Milestones JUICE will Achieve

It will be the first spacecraft to orbit a moon in the outer solar system(Ganymede)
Juice’s flyby of the Earth-Moon system, known as a Lunar-Earth gravity assist (LEGA), is a world first: by performing this maneuver — a gravity assist flyby of the Moon followed just 1.5 days later by one of Earth — Juice will be able to save a significant amount of propellant.^[4]

Space-craft Structure

Three-axis stabilized with 10 solar panels and a 2.5-metre-long High Gain Antenna, with a dry mass of approximately 2400 kg and a wet mass (including fuel) of approximately 6000 kg. Each solar panel measures about 2.5 m x 3.5 m; with five on each side of the spacecraft deployed as two distinctive cross-shaped arrays, these total an area of about 85 square meters.

Journey

Juice will spend approximately eight years cruising to Jupiter, during which it will complete fly-bys of Venus, Earth and the Earth-Moon system. It will reach Jupiter in July 2031; six months before entering orbit around Jupiter, Juice will begin its nominal science phase. The spacecraft will go on to spend many months orbiting Jupiter, completing fly-bys of Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, and finally conducting an orbital tour of Ganymede.^[4]

Details


Details about the JUICE mission
Life time	4yrs.
Launch	Kourou, French guinia
Rocket	Ariane 5
Launch date	April 13, 2023
Launch Time	12:15UTC (8:15am EDT) (5:35pm IST)

Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer Media

Ariane 5 launch of the ESA Juice spacecraft
Ganymede view by the Galileo spacecraft
Section of Europa's icy surface
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) will carry the most powerful remote sensing, geophysical, and in situ payload complement ever flown to the outer Solar System. It includes 10 dedicated scientific instruments, a radiation monitor (RADEM) and the Planetary Radio Interferometer & Doppler Experiment (PRIDE).3GM, or the Gravity & Geophysics of Jupiter and Galilean Moons, is a radio package comprising the KaT (Ka transponder), USO (ultrastable oscillator) and HAA (High Accuracy Accelerometer). The experiment will study the gravity field at Ganymede, the extent of the internal o
The RIME antenna in stowed configuration. A "selfie" photograph, shortly after launch by the Juice monitoring camera 2 (JMC2), with Earth in the background
The scalar sub-instrument (MAGSCA), an optical magnetometer with low absolute error, is part of J-MAG