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Is Jupiter’s Moon Habitable? Clipper by NASA and JUICE by ESA to find out


Jupiter’s large icy moons contain many secrets that remain undiscovered. ESA’s JUICE spacecraft, short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, is about to embark on a mission to visit the largest planet in our solar system. JUICE’s journey to Jupiter will take a total of eight years, during which time it will use gravitational support from Earth, Venus and Mars to conserve fuel. Upon arrival at Jupiter in July 2031, the solar-powered spacecraft will use its 10 science instruments to investigate three of the four largest moons orbiting the giant planet – Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – all believed to possess subsurface oceans, as Scientific American reports.

Of these moons, however, ESA’s JUICE will primarily focus on Ganymede, which is the largest moon in the entire solar system. ESA is not alone in pursuing exploration of the giant planet of the solar system. The report further mentioned that the origin of what would become JUICE occurred through collaboration with NASA called Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM) in 2008. However, subsequent funding problems led NASA to pull the plug on EJSM. The project was originally called the Europa Multiple Flyby Mission which was eventually renamed the Europa Clipper by the United States, inspired by the term “clipper”.

Partnership between Clipper and JUICE

The international partnership between Clipper and JUICE has since been revived. “Having two spacecraft in the same system would be really cool,” said Olivier Witasse at ESA, JUICE project scientist. A team of about 20 scientists from both missions met almost weekly as part of the JUICE-Clipper Steering Committee, working to come up with a plan for how the two spacecraft might align the spacecraft. their efforts to reach Jupiter.

The plan is that after JUICE reaches Ganymede’s orbit in December 2034, it will conduct a comprehensive examination of the moon’s surface and investigate its magnetic field. These important missions are essential to future efforts to chart the moon’s inner water layers. JUICE will begin the mission from a position 5,000 km above Ganymede. Over a nine-month period, the spacecraft will gradually descend to just 200 kilometers above the lunar surface. And when the mission ends in 2035, JUICE will deliberately crash into the surface to prevent the possibility of debris contaminating Europa.

Meanwhile, Clipper will make a similar observation of Europa and its oceans. “It’s a miniature solar system. We are looking for potential habitats that can sustain life,” said Giuseppe Sarri, JUICE project manager at ESA.


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