This collaborative effort called for Europe to build a Ganymede-focused spacecraft, while NASA would construct a probe for Europa. The concept that would ultimately become JUICE emerged in 2008 as part of the Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM), a joint venture with NASA. “We're trying to characterize what the habitability of Ganymede might be,” says Emma Bunce of the University of Leicester in England, part of the JUICE team.ĮSA isn't the only space agency with Jupiter in its sights. After its initial reconnaissance, the spacecraft will enter orbit there in 2034. Ganymede, the solar system's largest moon, will receive most of JUICE's attention. On its arrival in July 2031 the solar-powered machine will focus its 10 science instruments on three of the four largest Jovian moons-Europa, Ganymede and Callisto-all thought to harbor subsurface oceans. The six-ton JUICE spacecraft will take eight years to reach Jupiter, saving fuel along the way by using gravitational assists from Earth, Venus and Mars. ESA's JUICE-the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer-was shipped to French Guiana in South America for its April launch on a European Ariane 5 rocket.
For now all eyes are on Jupiter.Ī new mission to visit our solar system's largest planet and investigate the habitability of its moons is now set to begin. “When we look out in the solar system, places that have water in the present day are really restricted to Earth and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.” That last planet and its satellites, studied in detail by NASA and the European Space Agency's Cassini-Huygens mission from 2004 to 2017, still hold secrets that scientists will one day probe. “What we've learned on Earth is where you find water, you quite often find life,” says Mark Fox-Powell of the Open University in England. Scientists believe vast oceans lurk within them, kept liquid by the jostling from Jupiter's immense gravitational field and protected from the planet's harsh radiation belts by thick ice sheets.
If there is life elsewhere in our solar system, Jupiter's large icy moons are a pretty good bet on where to find it.
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