The Ariane 5 rocket, which will send the JUICE probe on a long 12-year mission, was to be launched from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Due to the danger of lightning, the launch has been canceled and will take place on Friday.
The launch was scheduled for 3:15 p.m., but at 3:06 p.m. it was reported that the weather was unfavorable and therefore the plans for Thursday were canceled.
The JUICE probe should detach from the rocket 28 minutes after launch. At this point, JUICE will be traveling at a speed of 10 km/s, i.e. 36,000 km/h.
The probe will help us find out whether the three celestial bodies in the Jupiter system could have environments that could support life. Some components of the mission were tested in Romania, and Romanians also contributed to some of the test chambers.
The spacecraft will be launched on the same type of rocket that sent the James Webb Space Telescope into space on Christmas Day 2021. No component of the Ariane 5 rocket is reusable.
JUICE, or Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission to explore the Solar System’s largest planet, Jupiter, and its natural moons Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. Work on the €1.6 billion mission began in 2012.
JUICE – Calendar of missions
The JUICE probe will enter Jupiter’s orbit in July 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.
Between 2031 and 2035, JUICE will make a total of 35 flybys (two around Europa, 12 around Ganymede and 21 around Callisto).
The probe is embarking on an eight-year journey that will see it fly by Earth, Venus, Earth, Mars and Earth again before leaving the inner solar system to head for Jupiter.
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 the same planetary system?
The JUICE instruments will allow researchers to compare these icy moons and investigate the likelihood that such celestial bodies have environments that could harbor life, such as oceans beneath the planet’s surface. At the same time, the instruments will observe the planet Jupiter, its atmosphere and magnetosphere, other satellites and rings.
The JUICE vessel was designed and built by Airbus Defense and Space
The Juice mission, in which Romania also participates, is equipped with 10 state-of-the-art instruments – cameras, radar, altimeter and sensors that monitor the magnetic field and electrically charged particles in the Jupiter system.
To achieve these goals, the mission had to be designed according to very strict criteria.
One of these criteria relates to the extreme radiation the craft will be exposed to during its mission. Components and materials must be carefully tested and selected, and radiation shields must be designed. Some components of the Juice mission were tested in Romania for protection against cosmic radiation.
The satellite will have a mass of about six tons at launch and will be placed around Earth in an evacuation orbit to Jupiter to begin its 600 million kilometer journey.
What is interesting about the three “satellites” of Jupiter that JUICE will reach
Europe it 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 has 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.
Source: Hot News
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