Ambitious Mission to Jupiter’s Icy Moons Gets Science Instruments

An ambitious European mission that will launch a robotic probe to explore Jupiter’s icy moons in 2022 has got its science gear.

The European Space Agency has picked 11 instruments for the planned JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft. The mission is expected to reach Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, in 2030 and spend at least three years studying the gas giant’s major moons Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede. The Jovian satellites are intriguing to scientists because they are thought to have vast oceans beneath their icy outer crust.

“Jupiter and its icy moons constitute a kind of mini-Solar System in their own right, offering European scientists and our international partners the chance to learn more about the formation of potentially habitable worlds around other stars,” said Dmitrij Titov, JUICE study scientist for ESA, in a Feb. 21 statement.

The JUICE mission will observe Jupiter’s atmosphere and magnetosphere, as well all four Galilean moons: Europa, Callisto, Ganymede and the volcanic Io. The spacecraft is expected to make 12 flybys of crater-covered Callisto, as well as two close passes of Europa in an attempt to gather the first-ever measurements of the thickness of that moon’s frozen crust, ESA officials said. [Amazing Space Missions to Jupiter]

The spacecraft will eventually end up orbiting Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, to study its surface and internal structure. Ganymede is also the only known moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field, and JUICE will closely observe the moon’s interactions with Jupiter’s magnetosphere, ESA officials said.

The collection of approved instruments to help scientists complete these tasks includes cameras, spectrometers, a laser altimeter and an ice-penetrating radar, as well as a magnetometer, plasma and particle monitors, and radio science hardware, ESA officials said. Teams from 15 European countries and the United States and Japan will develop the tools.

“The suite of instruments addresses all of the mission’s science goals, from in-situ measurements of Jupiter’s vast magnetic field and plasma environment, to remote observations of the surfaces and interiors of the three icy moons,” Luigi Colangeli, coordinator of ESA’s solar system missions, said in a statement.

NASA will provide one of the instruments on JUICE — a radar to peer deep inside Jupiter’s icy moons — as well as the parts for two European instruments, the U.S. space agency said.

“NASA is thrilled to collaborate with ESA on this exciting mission to explore Jupiter and its icy moons,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington, in a statement. “Working together with ESA and our other international partners is key to enabling future scientific progress in our quest to understand the cosmos.”

While the JUICE mission will launch in 2022, NASA currently has another spacecraft en route to the giant planet. The Juno spacecraft launched in 2011 and is expected to arrive in orbit around Jupiter in July 2016 to study the planet’s magnetic field and peer through its cloudy atmosphere.

JUICE and Juno are the first missions dedicated to Jupiter exploration since NASA’s Galileo mission from 1989 to 2003.

ESA Turns On The JUICE For New Jupiter Mission

The European Space Agency has given the go-ahead for an exciting mission to explore the icy moons of Jupiter, as well as the giant planet itself.

JUICE — JUpiter ICy moons Explorer — will consist of a solar-powered spacecraft that will spend 3.5 years within the Jovian system, investigating Ganymede, Europa and the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. Anticipated to launch in June 2022, JUICE would arrive at Jupiter in early 2030.

As its name implies, JUICE’s main targets are Jupiter’s largest icy moons — Ganymede and Europa — which are thought to have liquid oceans concealed beneath their frozen surfaces.

The largest moon in the Solar System, Ganymede is also thought to have a molten iron core generating a magnetic field much like Earth’s. The internal heat from this core may help keep Ganymede’s underground ocean liquid, but the dynamics of how it all works are not quite understood.

JUICE will also study the ice-coated Europa, whose cueball-smooth surface lined with cracks and jumbled mounds of frozen material seem to be sure indicators of a subsurface ocean, although how deep and how extensive is might be are still unknown — not to mention its composition and whether or not it could be hospitable to life.

“JUICE will give us better insight into how gas giants and their orbiting worlds form, and their potential for hosting life,” said Professor Alvaro Giménez Cañete, ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration.

The JUICE spacecraft was originally supposed to join a NASA mission dedicated to the investigation of Europa, but NASA deemed their proposed mission too costly and it was cancelled. According to Robert Pappalardo, study scientist for the Europa mission based at JPL, NASA may still supply some instruments for the spacecraft “assuming that the funding situation in the United States can bear it.”

JUICE will also capture images of Jupiter’s moon Callisto and search for aurorae in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere, as well as measure the planet’s powerful magnetic field. Once arriving in 2030, it will spend at least three years exploring the Jovian worlds.

Read more in today’s news release from Nature, and stay tuned to ESA’s JUICE mission page here.

JUICE to Jupiter Could Be ESA’s Next Major Science Mission

The Science Programme Committee of the European Space Agency has recommended that the next major space mission for ESA be an orbiter mission to the Jupiter system named JUICE, the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer. This mission would launch in about 2020 and explore potentially habitable moon around the gas giant, Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede.

This recommendation is not the final decision, but puts JUICE as a front-runner for when representatives of all 19 ESA member states meet to discuss the various mission candidates on May 2, 2012

Other missions being considered are ATHENA , the Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics (originally called IXO) – which would be the biggest X-ray telescope ever built — even though smaller in scope than the original IXO) and study the extremes of the Universe: from black holes to large-scale structure ; and NGO, the New Gravitational wave Observatory, a smaller version of LISA, a space-borne gravitational wave detector which would place a three satellites in orbit.

“This is a big blow to space based astrophysics,” wrote European science blogger Steinn Sigurdsson, who added that rumors are floating around that the NGO science team may be disbanded immediately, even though the new report issued by the Science Programme Committee is just a recommendation.

Planetary Society blogger Emily Lakdawalla also commented on the selection — if it is accepted — “represents a big win for planetary science and a big loss for space-based astrophysics in Europe. Which is, one can’t help but notice, opposite to what the currently-proposed NASA budget represents.

Whatever mission is chosen for the next flagship science mission, ESA knows it will likely have to do it on their own.

In March 2011, NASA informed ESA that that it was highly unlikely that they could become a major partner in an “L” (large) mission for the 2020 timeframe.

“Given the resulting impossibility to continue with the mission concepts defined in the Assessment Phase, the Executive terminated the relative activities for EJSM-Laplace, IXO, and LISA, and informed the members of the three Science Study Teams of the termination of their mandate,” the new report says. “To preserve as much as possible the investment of the scientific community and of the Member States in the study activities of the L mission candidates, the Executive implemented a recovery action in the form of a fast-track re-formulation activity. The aim has been to ascertain if and which of the science goals of the L mission candidates could be implemented in the context of a programmatically feasible European-led, or potentially European-only mission.”

With NASA no longer in the mix, ESA knew they would have to descope their proposed missions, and with costs needing to be at least 20% less than originally planned. “Needless to say, missions within these constraints must be significantly less complex than the original L mission concepts selected in 2007,” the report says.

ESA’s science goals for the front-runner JUICE mission is to visit the Jupiter system concentrating on the characterization of three possible ocean-bearing worlds, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto as planetary objects and potential habitats and on the exploration of the Jupiter system considered as an archetype for gas giants in the solar system and elsewhere. The focus of JUICE is to characterize the conditions that may have led to the emergence of habitable environments among the Jupiter’s icy satellites.