JUICE mission news
- 1European Space Agency, SCI/S, ESAC, Madrid, Spain (nicolas.altobelli@esa.int)
- 2European Space Agency, SCI/E, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
- 3European Space Agency, OPS/OPJ, ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany
The JUICE mission has been launched by an Ariane 5 launcher on April 14, 2023 and is now on its way to reach Jupiter and its icy moons in 2031. The focus of JUICE is to characterise the conditions that may have led to the emergence of habitable environments among the Jovian icy satellites, with special emphasis on the internally active ocean-bearing worlds, Ganymede and Europa. Following a Jupiter Touring phase of 4 years, JUICE will become the first orbiter of a moon that is not our own, entering Ganymede orbit in 2034.
The spacecraft passed its commissioning review successfully on July 19, 2023, following the Near Earth Commissioning Phase (NECP), and, despite a few hickups, the ESA and multi-national instruments teams are now operating our interplanetary ship successfully.
We report on the interplanetary cruise so far, and in particular on the first-ever Moon-Earth double gravity assist manouver performed on August 19-20.
How to cite: Altobelli, N., Witasse, O., Vallat, C., Tanco, I., Dietz, A., and Erd, C.: JUICE mission news , Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-405, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-405, 2024.
