2023-04-14 14:24:15
Today is the first day of a journey that will last eight years and whose purpose is to find out if Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, the three great icy moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo Galilei (together with Io), keep a liquid heart with so much water that they would blush our great oceans. After a one-day delay due to bad weather, the Juice mission (acronym for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) has successfully lifted off from the European Space Agency (ESA) facilities in Kourou, in the French Guiana.
On board the brand new European Ariane 5 rocket -which has carried out its last service before being replaced by the Ariane 6-, its folded structure of more than six tons has separated from the rocket 28 minutes after launch, 1,500 kilometers away from the earth. They will be the first of a winding path in which the ship will use our planet, the Moon and also Venus as a kind of catapult to overcome the 600 million kilometers (in a straight line) that separate the small blue dot of which he spoke. Sagan from the largest gas giant in our cosmic neighborhood.
“It is one of the most complex space objects ever sent to the outer solar system,” ESA Director General Josef stressed at the post-launch press conference. “We should be very proud of this mission.” Conceived by Airbus, Juice carries ten scientific instruments (optical camera, imaging spectrometer, radar, altimeter, magnetometer…), protected from extreme temperatures by a multi-layer insulation cover.
In fact, one of the most challenging moments, as Carole Mundell, ESA Director of Science, Carole Mundell, ESA Director of Science, explained during the meeting, “One of the most difficult moments will be when you fly over Venus and have to withstand high temperatures. Mundell noted that this moment, which will occur in 2025, will be one of the most important moments of the trip, and that this approach will provide the first remarkable science data from the mission.
3 moons of 93
So far, 93 satellites have been discovered orbiting Jupiter. It has so many moons that some consider it “a mini solar system”, like Mundell. Exploring it “will make it easier to study how our cosmic neighborhood works and how planets are formed. And it will try to finally answer the question “Are we alone in the universe?” added the astrophysicist.
Juice’s main objective is not to find life directly, but to find worlds conducive to its appearance. Although the gas planet Jupiter is uninhabitable, its moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are ideal candidates: Beneath its icy surface, scientists have found evidence of oceans of liquid water, the liquid element that makes life possible (at least, such and how we know it).
Still, they are very different from each other. Callisto, Jupiter’s second largest satellite, is like a golf ball: it is the most cratered body in the Solar System, indicating its age. Through 21 flybys, Juice will try to find out about what the system was like billions of years ago. For its part, Europa is one of the most active and promising moons for harboring life: recent studies have indicated that its double ‘M’-shaped ice ridges with an altitude of more than 300 meters and separated by valleys some 800 meters deep wide can harbor pockets of liquid water under its surface. In fact, it’s so attractive that Europe will have its own European mission, Clipper, scheduled for next year.
But Juice’s central target will be Ganymede. Scientists believe that beneath its icy shell lies an ocean of liquid water that completely envelops it, although its exact composition and depth are unknown.
Furthermore, it is the only moon (and one of only three bodies in the Solar System) capable of generating its own magnetic field, a small magnetic ‘bubble’ within Jupiter’s enormous magnetosphere. What activates it and how it is related to that of your planet is still a mystery. It is also an enigma at a geological level: on the one hand, it presents places dotted with craters, such as Callisto; but also areas of more recent creation, such as Europe.
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