Editor TLN
May 26. (EUROPE PRESS) –
Six weeks after launchESA flight controllers have completed deployments for the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission to explore Jupiter’s icy moons.
In that time, the flight control team deployed all of the solar arrays, antennas, probes, and arms that were safely stowed during the launch. The final step has been to rotate and lock into place the probes and antennas that make up Juice’s Radio and Plasma Wave Research (RPWI).
“It has been an exhausting but very exciting six weeks,” he says it’s a statement Angela Dietz, deputy director of mission spacecraft operations. “We have faced and overcome several challenges to get Juice in the right shape to get the best science out of his journey to Jupiter.”
Regular snapshots of the entire implementation process have been received thanks to Juice’s two integrated monitoring cameras, each with a different field of view. In the hours after launch, These cameras took Juice’s first ‘selfies’ from space and since then they have been vital in verifying that all parts of the spacecraft deployed correctly.
Juice’s antennae and arms carry part or all of some of Juice’s 10 instruments. By placing them away from JUICE, instruments that need to be separate from the spacecraft’s own electric and magnetic fields they keep their distance.
This instrument package will collect data that will help us answer questions like: What are the ocean worlds of Jupiter like? Why is Ganymede so unique? Could there be, or ever have been, life in the Jupiter system? How has Jupiter’s complex environment shaped its moons and vice versa? What does a typical gas giant planet look like? How was it formed and how does it work?
Accompanying the views from the monitoring cameras, confirmation that everything was implemented as planned also came from the instruments themselves. The teams behind some of the instruments have been turning them on and taking measurements to check that everything is working fine. The teams have already confirmed that Juice’s RPWI, JANUS, J-MAG and GALA instruments, as well as the RADEM radiation monitor, are ready for Jupiter.
In the next few weeks, all the instruments will be turned on and checked, with the hope that, by mid-July, they will all work perfectly, ready to travel to Jupiter, where it will arrive in July 2031.
In August 2024, Juice will carry out the world’s first lunar Earth gravity assist. Performing this maneuver, a gravity-assisted flyby of the Moon followed just 1.5 days later by one of Earth, Juice will be able to save a significant amount of propellant on his journey.
