Europe’s Juice mission will fly by Earth and the Moon this week

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The European Space Agency’s Juice mission is set to carry out the first of two historic missions on its long journey to study the possibility of life on Jupiter’s icy moons.

The Juice, or Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, spacecraft, set to launch in April 2023, will make the first flybys of the Moon and Earth, respectively. The first dual gravity assist maneuver will be performed on Monday and Tuesday. This will act as a catapult, allowing Earth’s gravity will stop the spacecraft’s current trajectory and change its direction to fly past Venus in August 2025.

After that, the spacecraft could take a shortcut through the solar system and be on its way to Jupiter and its moons in July 2031.

The JUICE spacecraft will first fly by Earth’s moon on Aug. 19 at 5:16 p.m. ET, then make a quick pass by Earth about 25 hours later at 5:57 p.m. ET on Aug. 20. The space agency will provide animated images. spacecraft trackingSome people using binoculars or telescopes in Southeast Asia may be able to see the asteroid as it flies directly overhead.

Meanwhile, Juice’s two cameras will take photos during the flight and send them back to Earth, where they will be stored. Appears on the agency’s blog.

But the pioneering maneuvers are also very daring and challenging, and a small mistake could derail Juice and end the mission.

“It’s like going through a very narrow passage, very fast: pushing the throttle to the limit when the margin on the side of the road is just millimeters,” Ignacio Tanco, director of spacecraft operations at Juice, said in a statement.

On average, Jupiter is 497 million miles (800 million kilometers) from Earth, so getting there without a super-powerful rocket or thousands of pounds of fuel on board requires some careful strategic planning by mission planners. The JUICE flight plan has been in the works for 20 years.

Using the gravity of planets like Earth and Venus can make the right adjustments to Juice’s trajectory to put it in the right direction and at the perfect speed to reach Jupiter and enter orbit without passing directly by the planet.

Gravity assists can speed up or slow down a spacecraft, depending on how they are used, and they conserve fuel and allow a spacecraft to be equipped with a wide range of scientific instruments.

The double flyby of Earth and the moon will slow JUICE down enough so it can fly by Venus for a boost of energy next year before orbiting our planet twice for more boosts. According to the agency.

Slight adjustments to JUICE’s flight pattern put the spacecraft on the right path to reach the Moon and Earth at the right time and speed while coming extremely close to both. JUICE would first pass within 434 miles (700 kilometers) of the Moon’s surface and then fly to within 4,229 miles (6,807 kilometers) of Earth’s surface.

The moon’s gravity will bend Goose’s trajectory slightly so that it receives a much greater gravitational assist from Earth. But every detail of the double flyby has to work perfectly.

“For typical gravity assist operations, spacecraft operations have to be very precise,” Angela Dietz, spacecraft operations engineer at Juice Spacecraft, said in a statement. “For double-flying, they have to be very precise.”

Operators using ground stations around the world will closely track Juice data before, during and after flight to make any necessary adjustments at any time.

The flight control team trained and prepared to fly in case of any malfunction so they could get Juice back on track quickly.

“No one has ever tried to fly by the moon and Earth before. There are risks, but all the systems on board have been rigorously tested, and we are well prepared,” Dietz said.

Although the JUICE spacecraft was designed to explore the cold, dim regions of the solar system near Jupiter, it will be closer to the sun during the flyby, and its solar panels must be tilted to prevent overheating. The spacecraft will also point its high-gain antenna toward the sun to act as a heat shield, while its low-gain antenna will remain pointed toward Earth to relay communications during the flyby.

Telescopes and observatories have been tracking Gus’s close approach throughout the summer.

On July 6, a strange object triggered the automated alert systems of NASA and the European Space Agency that monitor potentially dangerous asteroids. The object was estimated to be about 164 feet (50 meters) in diameter and was on its way to pass close to Earth and the Moon.

But it was just juice, and since it had large reflective solar arrays, the spacecraft Appeared bigger and brighterLike an asteroid. Agencies have confirmed that Juice poses no danger to Earth or the Moon as it passes by.

The spacecraft will also activate all 10 of its science instruments during the double flyby to calibrate them before arriving at Jupiter. In addition to testing the instruments, the mission team may also be able to make some discoveries about Earth and the Moon while the instruments are operating.

The RIME team, responsible for the radar instrument to explore the icy moon, is eager to collect data on the electronic noise inside the spacecraft that appears to be bothering the instrument. This could be one of the few opportunities to measure any effects on the instrument before it reaches Jupiter.

During the flyby, RIME will take eight minutes to make observations while other instruments are turned off or in quiet mode, and that data could help the mission team resolve the noise problem.