August 20, 2024
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Europe’s JUICE Jupiter Probe Passes by the Moon in Historic Flyby
Jupiter’s Icy Moons Explorer took a shortcut to the giant planet via Earth and the moon.
An image of the Moon taken by Monitoring Camera 1 of Europe’s Jupiter probe JUICE.
ESA/JUICE/JMC; Acknowledgement: Simeon Schmauß & Mark McCaughrean (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
Europe’s JUICE Jupiter probe approached the Moon for a “gravity assist” on Monday (August 19) and took a few photos to mark the historic encounter.
juice (short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) came within 465 miles (750 km) of the lunar surface on Monday evening, the first leg of an unprecedented gravity-assist doubleheader. The second leg is Tuesday evening, when the probe passes by Earth.
JUICE documented Monday’s lunar touchdown with several images taken using its two onboard monitoring cameras, designed to monitor the placement of the rover’s solar arrays and scientific instruments.
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and European Space Agency (ESA) shared the raw, unprocessed images with the world as soon as they arrived on Earth via a live webcast, which also included commentary from the JUICE team.
JUICE was launched in April 2023 with a research mission. Jupiter And three of those four big ones Galilean satellites — Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. All three planets are thought to have oceans of liquid water beneath their ice shells, and Europa’s ocean is in contact with a rocky seafloor, which could allow for a variety of interesting chemical reactions. (Ganymede and Callisto’s oceans may be sandwiched between layers of ice.)
This week’s Moon-Earth flyby was historic. No other mission has ever performed a dual gravity assist. According to ESA. The two maneuvers will set the probe on a course for similar encounters. Venus JUICE is scheduled to launch to the giant planet in August 2025.
Processed image showing a fuzzy blue Earth in the background as Europe’s Jupiter probe JUICE passes the moon on 19 August 2024.
ESA/JUICE/JMC; Acknowledgement: Simeon Schmauß & Mark McCaughrea (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
“Actually this flyby is a braking maneuver, so we are not accelerating JUICE, meaning we are gaining relative velocity. sun“Ignacio Tanco, JUICE spacecraft operations manager, said during ESA’s lunar flyby webcast.
“What we found is that if we follow this sequence of Earth first, then Venus, we save about half a year of cruise time and can get to Jupiter around July 2031,” Tanko added. “This kind of counterintuitive, brake-first approach ultimately leads to the shortest possible cruise phase.”
To achieve the speed changes they achieved through engine combustion during the two flybys this week, the JUICE team would have had to use almost all of the propellant in the rover’s tanks, Tanko said.
JUICE team members say the support worked flawlessly. “It was a perfect maneuver! No fine-tuning or corrections needed before tonight’s Earth flyby.” ESA Operations Posted on X August 20th.
During Tuesday’s Earth flyby, JUICE will come within 4,250 miles (6,840 km) of Earth. If all goes as planned, the closest approach will occur over the North Pacific at 5:57 p.m. ET (9:57 p.m. GMT).
JUICE team members say amateur astronomers could theoretically view the probe through a telescope — if they were in Alaska or another location around the North Pacific.
However, there will be no webcast of flyby images during Tuesday’s flyby. ESA’s Pacific region telemetry receiving stations are all in the Southern Hemisphere, so the JUICE team will not be able to communicate with the probe during the encounter, team members said Monday.
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