The ESA probe JUICE is on its way to the moons of Jupiter

Mith a day’s delay, the European space probe “JUICE” set off on its journey to the planet Jupiter on Friday. The probe lifted off punctually at 2.14 p.m. German time on board an Ariane 5 launch vehicle from the Kourou space center in French Guiana. The start was originally scheduled for Thursday, but had to be postponed five minutes before the start of the countdown due to an approaching thunderstorm.

On Friday afternoon everything went according to plan. Two minutes after the start, the two booster rockets were blasted off the launch vehicle at an altitude of 70 kilometers. Seven minutes later, at an altitude of around 205 kilometers, the lower and upper stages of the rocket separated. The latter continued the flight with the uncovered space probe.

Eight years travel time

27 minutes after the start, the “Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer” (JUICE) finally separated from the top rocket stage at an altitude of about 1530 kilometers and swung into the intended Earth orbit. From this phase onwards, the satellite control center of the European Space Agency ESA in Darmstadt took over the monitoring of the probe. Radio contact with JUICE was successfully established 50 minutes after take-off. The flight engineers in Darmstadt received a stable signal – the sign that JUICE is doing well. At 4:30 p.m. German time, the huge solar panels that power the probe and its ten instruments began to unfold. After a few minutes, the process was complete and the two 85 square meter sun sails were fully unfolded. All JUICE systems tested up to that point are functional.

This marks the beginning of the journey of ESA’s first independent mission to the outer solar system. JUICE will need a total of eight years to travel to the Jupiter system. In the coming year, the probe will fly past the Earth and Moon again, then Venus and finally two more times in 2026 and 2029 to gain momentum in the gravitational fields of the two planets for the flight to Jupiter.

In 2031, JUICE is scheduled to arrive at its destination and primarily investigate the icy moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, under whose icy crusts oceans of liquid water are suspected. The aim is to investigate whether there could be conditions for biological activity, particularly in the subterranean ocean of the Europa. In 2035, the space probe on the moon Ganymede should be brought to crash.