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.

The spacecraft launched on 14 April 2023. It will reach Jupiter's orbit in July 2031 after four gravity assists and eight years of travel.

It will fly near the moons before going into orbit around Ganymede.

 Instruments onboard JUICE 
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.

 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 fuel.

 Spacecraft 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.

 Details 
+Details about the JUICE mission                              Life time4yrs.LaunchKourou, French guiniaRocketAriane 5Launch dateApril 13, 2023Launch Time12:15UTC (8:15am EDT) (5:35pm IST)

References

Category:2020s in spaceflight
Category:European Space Agency spacecraft
Category:April 2023 events