The launch of the JUICE probe to Jupiter was postponed at the last minute – News

The lift-off of the Ariane 5 rocket with the JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer) probe was delayed by less than 24 hours shortly before the launch due to the weather at the spaceport in South America – specifically due to the excessive risk of lightning. The next attempt can therefore take place already on Friday.

The launch vehicle with a six-ton ​​payload – a 2.4-ton probe and 3.6 tons of fuel – was scheduled to launch on Thursday at 2:15 p.m. CEST. The start can be repeated in the following 14 days. The next opportunity will not arise until August.

Czech experts also took part in the entire project under the banner of the European Space Agency (ESA). The involvement of domestic companies is also described in detail in a recent press release from the Ministry of Education.

The goal of the mission is to explore the Jupiter planetary system and the planet’s icy moons. Europa, Callisto and the giant Ganymede, according to scientists, hide oceans under the icy crust that could potentially be the place for the origin of life.

JUICE is equipped with ten devices, including optical cameras, spectrometers, and electric and magnetic field sensors.

The probe should be separated from the launch vehicle half an hour after launch. Subsequently, giant solar panels with an area of ​​85 square meters will be developed to provide power for scientific instruments and service systems.

In the first stages of its journey, JUICE will circle the Earth, the Moon and Venus several times, which it will use for a gravitational maneuver. This will give her the speed needed to reach Jupiter. It will move around our planet until 2029.

Between 2031 and 2034, it is expected to begin fulfilling the main goal of its mission, i.e. the exploration of the Jupiter system and its three moons, which it will fly by up to 35 times.

In 2035, it will “luxuriate” in the orbit of Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. By impacting its surface, it will end its mission.

On board the probe are ten instruments whose mission is to explore everything from Jupiter and its surroundings to the oceans trapped deep below the surface of the moons. The probe will communicate with the Earth using an antenna with a diameter of 2.5 meters.

ESA scientists said the goal of the mission is not to find life on the icy moons. Juice will try to find out if life could or could exist on them. Humanity would then wait for a closer examination depending on the results of the mission in the following decades.

“A week after the start, we will have intensive work connected with the controlled tilting of the measuring antennas. During the flight to Jupiter, we plan to use our device to detect the impact of cosmic dust on the probe, thus contributing to research on its occurrence, especially in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter,” noted Ondřej Santolík, head of the Czech research team from the Institute’s space physics department, in a press release. of atmospheric physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

The institute worked on a device for researching radio and plasma waves in the Jupiter environment. “We also know from previous Galileo measurements that the moon Ganymede has its own magnetic field, in which electromagnetic waves at audible frequencies propagate. We still don’t know much about them and similar phenomena in Jupiter’s magnetosphere, although they could be very important for the level of radiation around the planet,” Santolík added.

Scientists from the Institute of Instrumentation of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Brno were also involved in the preparation of the Juice mission, who, using their own cryogenic apparatus, tested the level of thermal radiation of the probe’s special coating. Scientists from the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic also participated in the project, who built a prototype of a special power source.

ESA has been working on the project of the first European probe to explore Jupiter since the beginning of the last decade. The mission cost approximately 1.6 billion euros (37.6 billion crowns). According to ESA, over 2,000 people from 23 countries participated in the development and testing of the probe and equipment.