Last week, the JUICE probe performed what the ESA described as its “largest and most important manoeuvres in its eight-year journey to Jupiter.”
Last week, the JUICE probe performed what the ESA described as its “largest and most important manoeuvres in its eight-year journey to Jupiter.”
European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) probe will use double gravity assist, for the first time ever, from Earth and Moon to propel itself towards Jupiter. The gas giant-bound spacecraft was launched earlier this year, to study the planet as well as its three icy and potentially ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
Last week, the JUICE probe performed what the ESA described as its “largest and most important manoeuvres in its eight-year journey to Jupiter.”
The manoeuvre was a 43-minute burn using its main engine and around 10 per cent of the probe’s entire fuel reserve to change its orbit around the Sun ahead of its flyby and set the stage for next summer’s Earth-Moon double gravity assist.
“This manoeuvre used up roughly 363 kilograms of fuel – or almost exactly 10% of the 3,650 kilograms of fuel that JUICE was launched with,” Julia Schwartz, Flight Dynamics Engineer at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Germany, said in a statement.
ALSO READ | Explained | Get the dope on JUICE, Europe’s mission to find aliens
The move on November 17, marked the first of a two-part manoeuvre, which is a first-of-its-kind flyby where the probe will first pass by the Moon to gain momentum and make the flyby Earth a day and a half later.
“This first burn did 95% of the work, changing Juice’s velocity by almost 200 m/s,” Schwartz added.
The ESA scientist explained that given that JUICE is among the heaviest interplanetary spacecraft ever launched with a total weight of around 6000 kg, “it took a lot of force and a lot of fuel to achieve this.”
Gravity assist is a technique by which a spacecraft, with the help of the gravitational field of a planet, gets a speed boost.
However, it is tricky to do so, to execute a gravity assist, the spacecraft needs to pass through the planet’s gravitational field at a carefully calibrated exact point in order to get a “slingshot effect.”
This means that JUICE would have to arrive at the Earth-Moon system at precisely the correct time, and speed and be travelling in the correct direction.
While most of the work is done, the next step involves a second, much smaller manoeuvre which is necessary to put JUICE on the right trajectory for the Earth-Moon gravity assist. “Splitting the manoeuvre into two parts allows us to use the second firing of the engine to iron out any inaccuracies of the first,” the ESA engineer explained.
ALSO READ | ESA JUICE mission delayed by 24 hours due to bad weather
A much smaller manoeuvre would also be executed using Juice’s smaller thrusters in May 2024 for the final fine-tuning of the probe’s trajectory during its approach to Earth, said the ESA.
ESA successfully launched its JUICE spacecraft from its spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on April 14.
JUICE aims to make detailed observations of the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons and is equipped with remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments, but given the distance between the home planet and the gas giant, it won’t be able to do so before 2031.
(With inputs from agencies)
Nishtha Badgamia
Indian researchers find no link between sudden death and Covid shots
People who strictly adhered to Covid rules have bad mental health now: Study
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows heart of Milky Way in unprecedented details