“Juice” mission faces tricky maneuver
Published: Sunday, Aug 18th 2024, 10:00
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The "Juice" space probe is about to perform a daring maneuver: in order to gain momentum for its flight to Jupiter, it will first fly close to the moon and then close to the Earth next week.
"It's a very delicate maneuver," said Peter Wurz, who is involved in the mission, to the Keystone-SDA news agency. Wurz is Director of the Institute of Physics at the University of Bern. Under his leadership, a measuring device for the "Juice" mission was developed and built in Bern.
However, the physicist is not worried that it might not work. "The risk of it going wrong is very small. I'm not nervous about that."
Maneuver is a premiere
Specifically, the probe completes what is known as a "double flyby". In a flyby, a probe flies so close to a moon or planet that it is affected by the planet's gravity. Depending on how exactly the planet or moon is approached, the probe is either accelerated or decelerated. While flybys have been done many times before, the double flyby is not only a first for Juice, but for spacecraft in general.
"Juice" will fly past the moon at a distance of 700 kilometers on August 19 at 11:16 p.m. (CEST). On August 20 at 23:57, the probe will be closest to our planet at a distance of 6807 kilometers from the Earth's surface. The probe should then be visible from Earth, but not from us. It will fly over the Pacific Ocean, near the Philippines.
With this manoeuvre, "Juice" is taking a run-up to reach Jupiter, which is around 800 million kilometers away. The propulsion provided to the probe by the rocket at launch is not sufficient for this. The maneuver is tricky because it has to be carried out very precisely. According to Wurz, there is a margin of around one kilometer. The timing has to be accurate to within seconds.
Searching for traces of life
After years of travel, "Juice", with its ten instruments on board, will take a close look at Jupiter's moons "Europa", "Callisto" and "Ganymede" from 2031. Experts assume that there is water under a kilometer-thick layer of ice on the three moons - and therefore also possible conditions for life.
"Juice" was launched into space on board an Ariane 5 rocket from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on April 14, 2023.
©Keystone/SDA
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