2023-04-13 14:21:22
At 2:15 p.m., peninsular time, on April 13, 2023, the flight should have taken off. the Juice mission to Jupiter, however, after the latest weather check and due to the risk of lightning, the ESA has decided to delay the launch by 24 hours. The next attempt will be this Friday from the same point and these could even last until April 29.
The official message warns of a “code red”: “There will be no launch attempt today due to ‘red status’ during final timeline.” Through their social network profiles they have reported that this Friday they will try again from the European spaceport in the french guiana and add that “the Ariane 5 launch vehicle and its passenger JUICE are in stable and secure conditions.
It is a long trip, his destination is 8 years away and his objective is to discover if the gas giant Jupiter and its 3 icy moons has possibilities of habitability.
The mission seeks to discover more secrets of Jupiter and its 3 moons: Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, under whose icy crusts it is believed that there may be oceans of liquid water. For this, 10 instruments are sent and ESA has dedicated 1.6 billion euros.
Jupiter and its many satellites is a miniature solar system but to get to this planet you need patience because the journey lasts 8 years. 27 minutes and 45 seconds after the launch of the Ariane 5 that Juice travels will start everything. As a curiosity, the Ariane cap shows the drawing of Yaryna, a Ukrainian girl who is 10 years old today, who was the winner of a children’s contest held in 2021.
At that moment the probe will separate and begin a long journey on a path that is far from straight, because to achieve the necessary momentum and save maximum fuel it will have to rely on the help of gravity from the Earth, the Moon and Venus.
The first of these gravity assists is scheduled for August of next year when it will approach the earth and the moon; in 2025 she will need the boost from Venus, and between 2026 and 2029 twice as much from Earth.
In July 2031, the arrival of this probe is scheduled to weigh about 6 tons and whose mission has to face high radiationextreme temperatures, strong magnetic fields and low light.
For ESA, the moon Ganymede is the primary objective, not only because it is the largest moon in the solar system, but also because it is the only one with an internal magnetic field and a unique geological history.
The mission is designed to detect places around Jupiter or inside the icy moons where the necessary conditions exist to support life and not so much to detect it. Juice will become the first spacecraft to orbit a moon other than our own.
#launch #Juice #mission #Jupiter #icy #moons #delayed #hours #due #red #code