What is the JUICE spacecraft from Europe designed to study the ice moons of Jupiter?

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE spacecraft) is housed in a white room at Airbus’ Toulouse facility in southwest France. But its time on this earth is running out.

The JUICE spacecraft from Europe is prepared to begin an eight-year journey through the Solar System to determine whether the oceans buried under the cold moons of Jupiter can support extraterrestrial life.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE spacecraft) is currently housed in a white chamber at its maker Airbus in Toulouse, a city in southwest France. But its time on this earth is running out.

JUICE spacecraft from Europe

Before being transported to Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, off the coast of South America in early February, the spacecraft will soon be placed in a container and its wings will be gently folded up.

In April, one of Europe’s most challenging space missions in history is set to launch from there.

The prospect of bidding goodbye to what they refer to as “the beast” definitely brings on emotional reactions in the scientists and engineers in Toulouse who have worked on the project for years.

The six-ton spacecraft was eventually presented to the media on Friday, showcasing its ten pieces of scientific equipment, a 2.5 m (eight feet) in diameter antenna for communication with Earth, and a massive array of solar panels that still need to undergo one more test.

A memorial plaque honouring Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was the first to discover Jupiter and its largest moons in 1610, was attached to the spacecraft’s back as a parting present.

According to Cyril Cavel, the Airbus project manager for JUICE spacecraft, the cold, volcanic Io and its siblings Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were “the first moons discovered outside of our planet.”

A copy of Galileo’s “Sidereus Nuncius,” the first dissertation based on telescope observations, was brought by Cavel.

JUICE will provide a much crisper image of Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto more than 400 years from now before becoming the first spacecraft to orbit one of Jupiter’s moons.

The Earth acts like a catapult

It will be the first space mission from Europe to travel outside of the solar system, which starts beyond Mars.

More than 600 million kilometres (370 million miles) separate Jupiter from Earth, and JUICE will travel a diversionary route before making its planned arrival in July 2031.

The spaceship will travel two billion kilometres overall, utilising the gravity of Earth and later Venus as propulsion.

Nicolas Altobelli, the project scientist for JUICE at the European Space Agency, described it as “like a catapult that provides us momentum to Jupiter” (ESA).

The additional journey time will enable JUICE’s solar panels, the largest ever constructed for an interplanetary spacecraft and covering an area of 85 square metres, to absorb as much energy as possible.

Once it enters the “frost line” between Mars and Jupiter, where temperatures could plunge below – 220 degrees Celsius, it will require that electricity.

Then JUICE must carefully apply the brakes to enter Jupiter’s orbit. It is all on its own for that portion.

Cavel remarked that they will observe the manoeuvre from Earth without being able to intervene — if it fails, the mission is lost.

The satellite will sail by Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto 35 times from Jupiter’s orbit. Then, after orbiting the largest of the three planets, Ganymede, it will eventually touch down on the surface.

Not trying to catch “big fish”

To ascertain if the moons may have supported past or current life, JUICE spacecraft will examine them using ice-penetrating cameras, sensors, spectrometers, and radars.

It will be staring down 10-15 kilometres, where immense liquid oceans flow, rather than at the frozen surface of the moons.

Bacteria and single-celled creatures may exist in this harsh environment.

However, according to ESA director-general Josef Aschbacher, the expedition won’t be able to find “large fish, or organisms.”

Instead, it will search for environments that can sustain life, such as liquid water and an energy source that could originate from the tidal forces that Jupiter’s gravity produces on its moons.

If water on Ganymede is in contact with its rocky core, chemical components required for life “to be dissolved into the water,” according to Altobelli. This might be determined by analysing magnetic signals.

In its attempt to investigate Europa, NASA’s Clipper mission is scheduled to launch in 2024.

The logical next step would be to send a spacecraft to land on the surface of one of the moons if it turns out to be a particularly promising candidate to support life, according to Cavel.

The idea that JUICE spacecraft “would end its life on the surface of Ganymede,” he continued, “moves me.”

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