The JUICE mission to explore Jupiter’s ocean moons is about to launch

The European Space Agency (ESA) is sending an orbiter to discover Jupiter’s unusual moons. The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is scheduled to launch on 13 April from Kourou, French Guiana, and start its eight-year journey to Jupiter.

The orbiter is designed to discover Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, three of Jupiter’s largest moons. It will make two shut passes by Europa and 12 by Callisto throughout the first part of its mission, from 2031 to 2034, after which orbit Ganymede for the rest of its mission.

While Ganymede could seem to be an unconventional selection – Jupiter’s smaller moon Europa is usually thought to be extra prone to have the appropriate circumstances for all times – it’s the largest moon within the photo voltaic system, making it comparatively straightforward to achieve and orbit. Like Europa and Callisto, it’s thought to have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell.

“Ganymede in principle is less interesting than Europa, but because it’s a bigger moon, also potentially with water inside, and with a magnetic field, Ganymede has a lot of mysteries to solve,” says ESA’s Olivier Witasse, the mission’s challenge scientist. “One of the big questions is whether we could have around Jupiter a place where there could be habitable conditions, and Ganymede is one of those places.”

The presumably liveable atmosphere lies in Ganymede’s liquid ocean, which is considered the most important within the photo voltaic system. But we all know little or no about it, so it’s unclear whether or not it may have the appropriate circumstances for all times. JUICE will measure the water’s location, composition and depth within the hopes of discovering sufficient promise to warrant a future mission beneath the ice to search for precise indicators of life. “If you want to search inside the ocean, you need to know where the ocean is,” says Witasse.

JUICE’s measurements of the ocean can be aided by Ganymede’s internally generated magnetic discipline, the one one on any moon. Studying the magnetic discipline also needs to assist unravel Ganymede’s inner construction.

The mission can even purpose to map all three moons and examine the composition of their icy crusts, looking for any indicators of geological exercise. It will use radar to penetrate the crusts and measure the depths of the moons’ seas and the way far underground they lie for the primary time.

Because the aim of the mission is partly to grasp the Jupiter system as an entire and the potential for all times round related exoplanets, JUICE can even check out the opposite moons from afar and make detailed observations of Jupiter itself. Those observations will give attention to the planet’s highly effective magnetic discipline and the way it impacts the moons.

These measurements are anticipated to unravel a number of mysteries about Jupiter and its moons – if all goes effectively on the launch, the subsequent step is an extended wait. “The next most exciting phase will be in 2031 when we arrive at Jupiter and we start the planned mission,” says Witasse. “We start to get a little bit excited, but that’s still eight years from now.”