#PlanetBites: On ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer

At #EPSC2020, Olivier Witasse described the JUICE mission to Jupiter, a European mission to explore the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants.  The mission will explore the icy moons Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, particularly their internal oceans, as well as the Jupiter system globally (the atmosphere, interior, and magnetosphere).  The aurora of Jupiter show the invisible link between the planet and its wider system, the moons and rings.  

Olivier showed schematics of the spacecraft.  We have almost 90 m2 of solar panels, with a complex deployment sequence.  The optical bench is on the top, with the remote sensing instruments.  On the bottom is the 10-m magnetometer boom, with magnetic and plasma sensors.  There is a long boom for the radar, and smaller booms for plasma parameters.  Two antennas, the high gain antenna and medium-gain antenna will be used for the radio science subsystem, and there are ten instruments in total.  

The video shows movies from Airbus in Germany.  All instrument teams are working hard to build, test and deliver the flight models to the industrial contractors - so far two are delivered to Airbus (UVS from San Antonio, and RPWI from Uppsala), with thermal vacuum tests due at ESTEC in January 2021 being the next big milestone.  COVID has reduced the margins, with still one month in reserve for a launch in May 2022 from Kourou with Ariane 5.  Backup launches in Sep 2022 and Aug 2023 have also been studied.

JUICE has a complex and interesting mission profile, 7.5 years to Jupiter, arriving in 2029 for a 2.5 year orbital tour around Jupiter, making flybys of the icy moons.  In Sep 2032 JUICE will end up in Ganymede orbit, to study the largest satellite of Jupiter down to 500 km above the surface.  

JUICE is a challenging mission - the mission lifetime; the radiation environment requiring shielding; the thermal environment from the hot Venus to cold Jupiter; the power is an issue far from the Sun even with large solar arrays producing 1000 W; and some strong EM requirements, making the design complex.

Navigation is also challenging with two orbit insertions, and many flybys.  We have to address planetary protection, never impacting Europe, plus some power and data rate constraints.  Lastly, for a mission lasting 30 years from idea to the end of mission, we need to ensure we have all the knowledge available throughout.

https://sci.esa.int/web/juice/-/-6-start-of-assembly-and-integration-for-juice

Olivier shows some images of the spacecraft, with the tanks being inserted at the end of 2019 and the high-gain antenna undergoing tests, showing the size of this enormous spacecraft.  The spacecraft is really taking shape now, waiting for the instruments to be integrated.