Set to launch tomorrow at 8:45 a.m. EDT, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter probe is ready to go. The JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) is an exciting new space probe that will try and find life on the biggest moon in our solar system, Ganymede.
In the 1990s the American probe Galileo discovered ice on Ganymede's surface. Which kicked off the idea that small tiny microbes are hidden within the ice. ESA decided to send a mission to the moon of Jupiter to try and detect life from orbit. JUICE was announced in May of 2012 as a multi-billion dollar project. It took over three years to finish the blueprints and find the final design of JUICE before ESA started building the spacecraft in July 2015. By the time it was completed in 2020, its original launch date was going to be in the Summer of 2022. But delays in the mission pushed it back to April 2023.
The Long Road To Jupiter
It will be a while before JUICE can reach its target, Jupiter. In fact, JUICE is expected to arrive at Jupiter in July 2031! The reason involves a compacted system getting to other plants. Jupiter is about 553 million miles away from Earth, to send a spacecraft there in one shot would take lots of fuel and power from the rocket. So ESA has decided that they will use planets to speed up the spacecraft. For example, after JUICE launches it will not head to Jupiter, but it will follow Earth’s orbit. Then after it swings by Earth in the summer of 2024, it will head to Venus and conduct a flyby around the planet sometime in the fall of 2025. Then it will fly around Earth two more times, in 2026 and 2029. By the time JUICE has enough power, the spacecraft will head out toward Jupiter. After going into orbit around Jupiter, the mission plan is for it to orbit and conduct flybys of Ganymede for the next four years.
Life Hunters
JUICE will not be alone in its hunt for life on Jupiter, NASA’s Europa Clipper will also be searching the frozen oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa for life. Planned to launch next fall, the spacecraft will fly by Mars in 2025 and Earth in 2026, before reaching the planet ahead of time in the Spring of 2030. JUICE will not only help us try to find life in other worlds but may also discover new things about the moons of Jupiter as well.