French Guiana has been trying to launch the JUICE probe for a second day in a row after the European Space Agency decided to cancel it 10 minutes ahead of schedule on Thursday due to the threat of lightning. The €1.6 billion mission has been in the works for the past 11 years. The probe will help us find out whether the three celestial bodies in the Jupiter system could have environments that could support life.

The launch of the Ariane 5 rocket is scheduled for 15:14 (9:14 in Guyana). The JUICE probe should detach from the rocket 28 minutes after launch. In French Guiana, it is 25 degrees Celsius.

In Friday’s official LIVE, the European Space Agency gave a short interview to Michaela Barb, a Romanian who has been working on the JUICE mission since 2014.

JUICE does not directly look for signs of life on Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, and cannot find them. But they are looking for environments that are favorable for the emergence of life forms.

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 the creation of test chambers.

This is the first mission launched to Jupiter since the American Juno mission in 2011. The JUICE probe is one of the most advanced ever built, with 85 square meters of solar panels the size of a basketball court. These panels will power the probe in an environment where the Sun’s light is 25 times weaker than on Earth.

JUICE will make a very long journey of nearly eight years to Jupiter, a planet located at an average distance of 625 million kilometers from Earth. It will be a difficult journey, marked by some complex gravitational maneuvers using the gravitational pull of other planets to “catapult” the probe on the correct trajectory to the Jupiter system (Jupiter and its moons).

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.

The probe must be launched at strict one-second intervals to make the many trajectory changes needed to reach Jupiter in 2031. JUICE will also be near Earth in 2024, 2026 and 2029, and beyond Venus in the summer of 2025.

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.

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.

Ganymede will be an extremely interesting target. because we’re talking about the largest moon in our solar system, which is larger than Mercury and about three-quarters the size of Mars. Well, JUICE should be “captured” into the orbit of this huge satellite in December 2034 and make flybys that will lift the probe from an altitude of more than 5,000 km to only 500 km, and even 230 km if enough fuel remains in 2035. .

The subsurface ocean on Ganymede will be analyzed, and it is hoped that the probe with its super-instruments will be able to learn about the salinity of this ocean. The mission is expected to end on the surface of Ganymede in the fall of 2035.

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

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 is the largest natural satellite of the Solar System, it is larger than Mercury and almost the same as the planet Mars. It is the only natural satellite in the solar system that has its own magnetic field.

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