Analyze the subglacial oceans of Jupiter’s moons, places where there could be life. We follow the preparations for the Juice space probe, which will take off for Jupiter on April 13.
The science post of the weekend with Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the magazine Epsiloon today evokes the preparations for the takeoff of the space probe Juice, in a few days for Jupiter, on April 13.
franceinfo: The objective of the Juice space probe is toexplore three moons of this gas giant planet?
Mathilde Fontez: Yes, this is it. The Juice probe took place in the fairing of the Ariane 5 rocket, in Kourou, French Guiana. It was encapsulated in a fairing, and installed at the top of the rocket. The final preparations are underway, but overall everything is ready for takeoff next Thursday, April 13, at 2:15 p.m. precisely.
The probe will be deposited by Ariane, in orbit around the Earth, deploy its large solar panels, and propel itself towards Jupiter, the largest gas giant in the Solar System, with a few detours: it will revolve several times around the Earth, fly over Venus to gain speed.
The date of arrival of the probe around Jupiter?
July 2031! Yes it’s far. Juice will travel hundreds of billions of miles. But the giant Jupiter is not the main objective, it is its satellites that interest astrophysicists, in particular three moons: Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. Juice will begin by flying over the moon Europe in July 2031, twice. Then she will graze 21 times Callisto, which orbits farther from Jupiter.
And finally, it will go into orbit around Ganymede, in December 2034. This will be a first: never has a probe gone into orbit around a moon other than that of Earth.
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What do these moons look like?
Europa is a white ball the size of our Moon, very smooth. Callisto is studded with craters. And Ganymede is huge, bigger than the planet Mercury. But above all, what interests the researchers most – the main objective of the Juice mission – are the oceans that these moons hide under their icy crust.
This has been shown by previous observations – the flyby of the Voyager 1 probe in 1979, then Galileo in the 90s. These moons are heated by Jupiter: the enormous gravity of the giant kneads their interior, and heats it enough so that there are large expanses of liquid, temperate and salty water in their depths. Europe in particular: the Hubble telescope has even detected plumes of steam coming from this ocean, which escape from the fractures of its pack ice. The interior of these moons is therefore a kind of oasis: a place in which there could be life. A bit like the depths of the earth’s oceans.
So Juice is going to study these oceans?
Yes, thanks to a battery of 10 instruments, it will probe the depths of the moons. And Juice will not be alone in carrying out the study: another probe, Europa Clipper, designed by NASA, will take off in October 2024, to specifically target the moon Europa. It will even arrive before Juice, in April 2030. So it’s time for a new phase in the exploration of the Solar System: that of the oceans of the icy moons…