​On Thursday, the JUICE space probe will launch from French Guiana, which will reach Jupiter in eight years and analyze its three natural moons. The €1.6 billion mission is due to end in 2035. The most interesting celestial body is the satellite Europa, practically the best candidate in our solar system for the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The JUICE probe will be launched using an Ariane-5 rocket (European Space Agency). The main question the mission will try to answer is whether the icy oceans on Jupiter’s moons could harbor life forms.

The JUICE probe will enter Jupiter’s orbit in 2031, from where it will conduct a series of flybys of the moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, and then enter orbit around Ganymede in December 2034 (it will be the first interplanetary probe to do so). The probe will NOT touch any celestial body, but there are plans to launch a mission to touch the surface of the Europa satellite.

In the first three years after arriving at Jupiter, the probe will make a total of 35 flybys (two around Europa, 12 around Ganymede and 21 around Callisto).

The first important moment will be the approach to the planet Venus in August 2025. The completion of the mission is scheduled for September 2035.

The three satellites that will be analyzed are very different, and the mission will study the composition of materials on the surface and try to determine the connections between the surface and the oceans hidden far below the surface. Another question: how are such different celestial bodies in one planetary system?

The probe will conduct the most extensive survey ever conducted in the Jupiter system (that is, in the area around the planet Jupiter). Next year, the Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the American Europa Clipper probe to Jupiter, and in 2030 it will enter the orbit of the planet, from where it will fly by the moon Europa twice with JUICE, before also landing on the orbiting Ganymede.

Europa is an amazing celestial body. Why

“Icy Europa is warmed by Jupiter’s gravitational field. Like a ball that heats up when hit by a rocket, Europa is also heated by the differential effects caused by Jupiter’s gravity – stronger on one side of the moon than on the other. Consequences? “Current observations and theoretical data suggest that beneath the thick layer of ice on the surface there is an ocean of liquid water, probably zlotys. Given the fecundity of life in Earth’s oceans, Europa remains the best candidate in our solar system for extraterrestrial life,” writes Neil deGrasse Tyson in Black Hole Death and Other Cosmic Dilemmas.

Jupiter has more than 75 natural moons. Four are known, they were discovered by Galileo Galilei more than 400 years ago.

Europa is a place where life can exist because it has two key elements for the development and maintenance of life: water and energy derived from heat. A third element is also needed: organic chemicals. Europa contains a salty ocean beneath kilometers of ice, and this ocean is suspected to have a high temperature of around 0 C, which is 200 degrees hotter than the moon’s surface temperature.

Callisto – has the most craters in the solar system and probably no liquid water

Ganymede (also spelled Ganymede) is the largest natural satellite in the Solar System, larger than Mercury and almost as large as the planet Mars. It is the only natural satellite in the solar system that has its own magnetic field.

Io is the closest to Jupiter and is the most geologically active celestial body in the Solar System. On its surface there are at least several hundred active volcanoes, which throw jets of lava tens of kilometers into the atmosphere. Io will NOT be parsed by JUICE.