A spacecraft launched last year will next month orbit the Earth and the Moon, a groundbreaking world first, and travel through the solar system to Jupiter.
The European Space Agency’s JUICE spacecraft will launch in April 2023 to explore whether Jupiter’s icy moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa are capable of hosting extraterrestrial life in their vast, hidden oceans.
The unmanned six-tonne spacecraft is currently 10 million kilometres (six million miles) from Earth.
But it will fly back past the moon and then Earth on August 19-20, using their gravitational pull to save fuel on its winding eight-year journey to Jupiter.
Staff at ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, began preparations for this complex task this week.
JUICE is expected to reach Jupiter’s system in July 2031.
It will take a scenic route. NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch this October, yet it will launch a year early to juice its way to Jupiter’s moons.
the long and Winding Road
JUICE has to take the long route because the Ariane 5 rocket used to launch the mission was not powerful enough to reach Jupiter directly, which is some 800 million kilometres away.
Without the giant rocket, Juice would need 60 tonnes of propellant to send it directly to Jupiter — and according to the ESA, Juice only has three tonnes.
“The only solution is to use a gravity assist,” Arnaud Boutonnat, ESA’s head of analysis for the mission, told AFP.
By flying near planets, spacecraft can take advantage of their gravitational force, changing their path, speeding up or slowing down.
ESA said many other space missions have used planets to boost gravity, but next month’s Earth-moon flyby would be a “world first”.
The agency said it would be the first “dual gravity assist mission,” using assistance from two worlds consecutively.
JUICE will pass 750 kilometres above the Moon on August 19, and will fly by our home planet the next day.
Boutonnat said the spacecraft will fly from Earth “at a speed of 3.3 kilometres per second – if the Moon were not included, it would be three kilometres.”
As JUICE passes near Earth and the Moon, it will use the opportunity to take photographs and test several of its instruments.
Some people on Earth will be taking pictures right away. Some lucky amateur skywatchers, armed with binoculars or powerful telescopes, may even spot Juice as it passes over Southeast Asia.
– ‘Plate of Spaghetti’ –
This move has been carefully thought out over years, but it will be no easy task.
“Our goal is to hit the rat’s hole,” Boutonnat stressed.
Even the slightest mistake while orbiting the Moon will be magnified by the Earth’s gravity, which could create the danger that the spacecraft may enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up.
Boutonnat said the team on the ground will keep a close eye on the spacecraft — and they will have 12-18 hours to calculate and adjust its trajectory if needed.
He mainly feared a situation in which the amount of course corrections needed would wipe out the advantage gained from the dual-world catapult, which would mean they would “be doing it all for nothing”.
If all goes well, the juice will head back to interplanetary space — at least for a while.
It will first head to Venus for another flyby in 2025.
JUICE will fly past Earth two more times – once in 2026, then a final time in 2029, and finally head for Jupiter.
Then comes the really hard part.
Once JUICE reaches Jupiter, it will use 35 gravity assists while orbiting the planet’s ocean moons.
During this phase, the probe’s trajectory resembles “a real plate of spaghetti,” Boutonnat said.
“It’s a joke compared to what we’re doing with the Earth-Moon system,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
