Europe's JUICE Jupiter probe flies past the Moon in historic flyby

Europe's JUICE Jupiter probe flies past the Moon in historic flyby

TO Mike Wall & SPACE.com

Europe's JUICE Jupiter probe flew past the Moon on Monday (August 19) for a “gravity assist” and took a series of photos to commemorate the historic encounter.

JUICE (short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) came within 465 miles (750 kilometers) of the moon's surface Monday night, the first leg of an unprecedented gravity-assist double flyby. The second leg will come Tuesday night, when the probe flies past Earth.

JUICE captured Monday's encounter with the Moon, providing multiple images taken by the probe's two onboard cameras (which were designed to confirm the deployment of the probe's solar panels and scientific instruments).

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AND European Space Agency (ESA) shared these images with the world as soon as they arrived on Earth, raw and unprocessed, via a live webcast that included commentary from some members of the JUICE team.

JUICE was launched in April 2023 with the aim of studying Jupiter and three of its four big ones Galilean moons – Ganymede, Callisto and EuropeAll three planets are thought to have oceans of liquid water beneath their icy shells, and Europa's ocean is likely in contact with a rocky seafloor, allowing for a variety of interesting chemical reactions. (The seas of Ganymede and Callisto may be sandwiched between layers of ice.)

This week's flybys of the Moon and Earth were historic: No other mission has performed a double gravity assist. according to ESA dataThese two maneuvers will put the probe on course for a similar encounter with Venus in August 2025, which will launch JUICE towards the giant planet.

“This flyby is actually a braking maneuver, so we’re not accelerating JUICE, in the sense of picking up speed relative to Sun“…,” said Ignacio Tanco, the JUICE spacecraft's operations manager, during ESA's webcast of the lunar flyby.

“We found that by following this sequence of Earth first, then Venus, we can shave off about half a year of flight time and arrive at Jupiter around July 2031,” Tanko added. “This counterintuitive approach of braking first actually ends up producing the shortest possible flight phase.”

To achieve the same change in speed achieved during this week's two thruster-powered flybys, the JUICE team would have to use up nearly all the fuel in the probe's tanks, Tanko said.

JUICE team members say the assist worked perfectly. “It was a flawless manoeuvre! No adjustments or modifications are required before today's flyby,” ESA Operations posted in X August 20th.

During its flyby of Earth on Tuesday, JUICE will come within 4,250 miles (6,840 km) of Earth. If all goes according to plan, closest approach will occur at 5:57 p.m. ET (21:57 GMT) over the North Pacific Ocean.

According to the JUICE team, amateur astronomers could theoretically observe the probe through a telescope during the encounter — provided they are in Alaska or elsewhere in or near the North Pacific Ocean.

However, there will be no other webcast of flyby photos during Tuesday's flyby. All of ESA's Pacific Region telemetry receiving stations are in the Southern Hemisphere, so the JUICE team will not be able to communicate with the probe during the encounter, team members said Monday.

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