A long and winding road: Juice spacecraft takes the long way to Jupiter and its moons
A long and winding road: The Juice space probe takes the long way to Jupiter and its moons.
A spacecraft launched last year will circle Earth and the moon next month in a high-stakes, world-first maneuver as it makes its way through the solar system to Jupiter.
The European Space Agency’s Juice probe launched in April 2023 with a mission to discover whether Jupiter’s icy moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa could support alien life in their vast hidden oceans.
The six-ton unmanned spacecraft is currently 10 million kilometers (six million miles) from Earth.
But it will return to the moon and then Earth on August 19 and 20, using its gravitational capabilities to save fuel on its winding eight-year odyssey to Jupiter.
Staff at ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, began preparing for the complicated manoeuvre this week.
The juice is expected to arrive in the Jupiter system in July 2031.
He’ll take the scenic route. NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch next October, but it will beat Juice to Jupiter’s moons by a year.
Long and winding road
Juice is taking the longer route in part because the Ariane 5 rocket used to launch the mission wasn’t powerful enough for a direct shot at Jupiter, which is about 500 million miles away.
The Juice probe
The Juice probe.
Without a massive rocket, sending Juice directly to Jupiter would require 60 tonnes of propellant on board – and Juice only has three tonnes, according to the ESA.
“The only solution is to use gravity assists,” Arnaud Boutonnet, head of mission analysis at ESA, explained to AFP.
By flying close to planets, spacecraft can take advantage of their gravitational pull, which can change their trajectory, speeding it up or slowing it down.
Many other space missions have used planets to boost gravity, but next month’s Earth-Moon flyby will be a “world first”, ESA said.
It will be the first “dual gravity assist maneuver” to use pulses from two worlds in succession, the agency said.
Juice will pass 750 kilometers above the Moon on August 19, before passing close to our planet the next day.
The probe will leave Earth at a speed of “3.3 kilometers per second, instead of three kilometers if we had not added the Moon,” Boutonnet said.
Juice was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, in April
Juice was launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, in April.
As Juice zooms past Earth and the Moon, it will take the opportunity to take photos and test its many instruments.
On Earth, some will take pictures. Some lucky amateur observers, armed with telescopes or powerful binoculars, may even be able to catch a glimpse of Juice as it passes over Southeast Asia.
‘Plate of spaghetti’
This decision has been carefully calculated for years, but it will not be a walk in the park.
“We are aiming at a mouse hole,” Boutonnet stressed.
Even the slightest error during its launch around the Moon would be magnified by Earth’s gravity, potentially creating a small risk that the spacecraft could enter and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
The ground team will closely observe the spacecraft and have 12 to 18 hours to calculate and adjust its trajectory if necessary, Boutonnet said.
Jupiter's Ocean Moons
Jupiter’s ocean moons.
The spacecraft photographed in 2023, before its launch on its eight-year odyssey to Jupiter
The spacecraft photographed in 2023, before its launch on its eight-year odyssey to Jupiter.
He especially feared a scenario in which the number of course corrections needed would wipe out the gains of the world’s double slingshot, meaning they would “do all this for nothing.”
If all goes well, Juice will be heading back into interplanetary space, at least for a little while.
It will first head to Venus for another boost in 2025.
Juice will even fly past Earth twice more: once in 2026, then one last time in 2029 before finally heading off to Jupiter.
Next comes the really tricky part.
Once Juice arrives at Jupiter, it will use no fewer than 35 gravity assists as it bounces around the planet’s ocean moons.
During this phase, the probe’s trajectory resembles “a real plate of spaghetti,” Boutonnet explained.
“What we’re doing with the Earth-Moon system is a joke in comparison,” he added.
© 2024 AFP
Quote: Spacecraft to fly past Earth, moon on way to Jupiter (2024, July 27) retrieved July 29, 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-07-spacecraft-earth-moon-path-jupiter.html
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