On April twenty third, the European Area Company launched its JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE), a robotic explorer mission certain for Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Europa. Since then, mission controllers have carried out a number of maneuvers meant to place the spacecraft on a trajectory that may deposit it round Jupiter by July 2031. The subsequent maneuver can be a gravity help with Earth, which is able to happen on Monday, September twenty eighth, with its closest move (8,640 km; 5,370 mi) at 13:45 CEST (07:45 a.m. EST; 04:45 a.m. PST).
The primary maneuver occurred on August nineteenth, 2024, when JUICE carried out the first-ever lunar-Earth flyby. This braking maneuver put it on observe towards Venus, adopted by a gravity-assist maneuver (GAM) with the planet by August thirty first, 2025, that altered the spacecraft’s trajectory and allowed it to choose up additional pace. The upcoming flyby with Earth will set it up for a last Earth flyby in January 2029, which is able to place the spacecraft on the optimum flight path towards Jupiter.
These maneuvers are all essential to make sure JUICE has the mandatory velocity to achieve Jupiter with out overshooting. The difficult flight path may also imply that JUICE can have loads of gasoline to orbit Jupiter in 2031 and Ganymede in 2034. Arranging the upcoming flyby with Earth has been equally difficult, with six time slots established for making small course corrections to make sure it arrives on the proper angle and velocity for an optimum GAM.
“Till now, just one maneuver at minus 4 weeks was wanted,” says Angela Dietz, Juice Spacecraft Operations Supervisor. “It was of comparatively small measurement, however extraordinarily efficient. It put Juice in the proper spot for the flyby. Our Flight Dynamics Group did a tremendous job to arrange it!”
Earlier than the closest strategy, from 03:29 p.m. EST (12:29 p.m. PST) on Sept. twenty seventh to 12:29 p.m. EST (09:29 a.m. PST) on Sept. twenty eighth, JUICE will move inside Earth’s shadow. This implies the mission will run on battery energy alone, requiring some devices to be shut right down to preserve energy. Nevertheless, the mission will nonetheless accumulate information on Earth and the Moon between September twenty third and October third, simply because it did throughout its 2024 lunar-Earth flyby.
It will give instrument groups one other probability to calibrate the spacecraft’s devices and information evaluation instruments. That is important to making sure that the spacecraft collects the most effective scientific information and pictures as soon as it arrives round Jupiter. JUICE additionally has some attention-grabbing scientific goals for this flyby, together with gathering information on Earth’s magnetotail (the tail of its magnetic area). JUICE will spend a number of days inside this advanced construction created by Earth’s interplay with photo voltaic wind.
JUICE’s navigation digital camera crew may also practice on the Moon’s horizon to check out a brand new method to enhance its accuracy. Juice’s two onboard monitoring cameras may also take photographs all through the flyby, which can be shared on the ESA’s web site and social media accounts. Mentioned Claire Vallat, a Juice Mission Scientist:
All flybys are dangerous, requiring very cautious planning and steady monitoring. However the upcoming Earth flyby is way easier from an operational perspective than the 2024 lunar-Earth flyby, the place a flyby of the Moon set Juice up for a flyby of Earth the following day. That is nice information for science, as a result of it means we will flip Juice in all completely different instructions to level its science devices at completely different components of Earth and the Moon.
Additional Studying: ESA