The Ariane-5 rocket carrying the Juice spacecraft designed to explore Jupiter's icy moons has successfully launched from the Guiana Space Center located in Kourou, the European Space Agency said on Friday
PARIS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th April, 2023) The Ariane-5 rocket carrying the Juice spacecraft designed to explore Jupiter's icy moons has successfully launched from the Guiana Space Center located in Kourou, the European Space Agency said on Friday.
The launch has originally been scheduled for Thursday but was delayed due to risk of a lightning strike.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) will explore the giant gas planet and the three ocean worlds in its orbit � Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. The journey to Jupiter is expected to take JUICE eight years.
Once it arrives at Jupiter in July 2031, the spacecraft will deploy its solar arrays and remote-sensing instruments to explore the Jupiter system's environment as both planetary objects and possible habitats as well as an archetype for gas giants across the universe for three and a half years.
NASA's Galileo spacecraft was the first probe to enter Jupiter orbit. It was launched in 1989 and reached the planet's orbit on 1995 where it remained until 2003.
In 2011, the Juno space probe was launched by NASA for scientific exploration of Jupiter. It reached Jupiter orbit in 2016 and was expected to complete its mission in 2021 but ended up extended until the end of 2025.
In 2024, NASA's Europa Clipper mission is expected to be launched to study Jupiter's moon Europa.
Since 2010, Russian state space corporation Roskosmos has been developing its nuclear propulsion spacecraft designed to transport large cargoes into deep space. The Zeus spacecraft under the Nuklon project is expected to start its 50-month mission in 2030.
