But be patient: JUICE won't get to the Jovian system until 2031.
spacecraft launched atop an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on Friday at 8:14 a.m. EDT , after a one-day delay caused by the threat of lightning at the launch site. Spacecraft separation occurred some 28 minutes after liftoff.
The liftoff kicked off an ambitious mission to study Jupiter and three of its biggest, most intriguing moons — Ganymede, Callisto and"The main goal is to understand whether there are habitable environments among those icy moons and around a giant planet like," planetary scientist and JUICE team member Olivier Witasse said during a press conference on April 6.
But the JUICE team and space fans around the world will have to be patient: The spacecraft won't make it to the Jovian system until 2031.A long trek through deep space JUICE will take a circuitous, energy-efficient route to the king of planets, boosting its speed and honing its trajectory with the aid of four separate"gravity assist" planetary flybys.and its moon, with flybys of the two bodies separated by just 1.5 days. JUICE will be the first spacecraft ever to perform such a"lunar-Earth gravity assist," and pulling it off will be a challenge.
After this final Earth encounter, the solar-powered probe will head toward Jupiter more directly, finally reaching the gas giant in July 2031. JUICE will then perform yet another flyby, this time of the huge Jovian moonAn illustration of JUICE's journey and the gravity assists that will get the spacecraft to the Jovian system.
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