JUPITER ICY MOONS EXPLORER (JUICE) – SCI & TECH
News:
European Space Agency set to launch Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE)
What's in the news?
● The
European Space Agency (ESA) is all set to launch the Jupiter Icy Moons
Explorer, or Juice, mission on April 13 from its spaceport in French Guiana on
an Ariane 5 launcher.
JUICE MISSION:
Aim:
● To
carry out a detailed exploration of the Solar System’s largest planet - Jupiter
and its icy moons, which potentially have habitable environments.
● To
create a comprehensive picture of Jupiter by trying to understand its origin,
history and evolution.
Nodal Organization: European Space Agency
Mission:
● JUICE
“will make detailed observations of the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons - Ganymede,
Callisto and Europa”, by using remote sensing, geophysical and in situ
instruments.
● Juice
will also analyse the chemistry, structure, dynamics, weather, and climate of
Jupiter and its ever-changing atmosphere.
Features:
● Planned
to reach Jupiter in 2031.
● Scientists
for quite some time have known that these three moons of Jupiter possess icy
crusts, which they believe contain oceans of liquid water underneath, making
them potentially habitable. Juice will help probe these water bodies by
creating detailed maps of the moons’ surfaces and enable the scientists, for
the first time, to look beneath them.
Prime focus on Ganymede:
● Juice,
which will move into Ganymede’s orbit after approximately four of arriving at
Jupiter, will “use its suite of ten sophisticated instruments to measure how
Ganymede rotates, its gravity, its shape and interior structure, its magnetic
field, its composition, and to penetrate its icy crust using radar down to a
depth of about nine km.
● Ganymede is the largest
moon in the Solar System - larger than Pluto and
Mercury and the only one to generate its own magnetic field.
Other Missions of Jupiter:
● Galileo Mission
- NASA (Orbited the gas giant between 1995 and 2003)
● Juno Mission
- NASA (Circling the planet since 2016)
● Europa Clipper
- NASA - scheduled to be launched in October this year, Europa Clipper would
arrive at Jupiter in 2030 and aims to study its Europa moon.