The launch of the European ship Juice to the icy moons of Jupiter, which was scheduled for today at 2:15 p.m. (Spanish peninsular time), has had to be postponed due to the danger that the Ariane 5 rocket would be struck by lightning during its ascent by the atmosphere, the Arianespace company has reported fifteen minutes before takeoff.
The next launch attempt from the Kourou space base, in French Guiana, will take place tomorrow, Friday, at 2:14 p.m. Juice will leave for Jupiter, where he will arrive in 2031 to find out if its moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa can be habitable.
The countdown had taken place without incident, although under a cloudy sky, as seen in the images of the live broadcast of ESA TV, the television channel of the European Space Agency (ESA). Although the rocket can be launched into clouds, launches are canceled whenever there are excessive winds or a risk of lightning in the rocket's path.
Developed by ESA, the Juice spacecraft carries ten scientific instruments on board to investigate Jupiter's three large icy moons. Although it is not designed to search for life, nor is it expected to find it, the mission will study whether any of these moons meet the necessary requirements to support life.
Observations from previous missions to Jupiter and from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as theoretical and modeling studies, indicate that Europa almost certainly has an ocean of liquid water under its icy crust; that Ganymede probably has another subterranean ocean, which would be larger than Europa's; and that Callisto possibly has a third.
Juice, the first mission built specifically to study these moons, must confirm or disprove the existence of these subterranean oceans; determine how much water they contain; estimate the thickness of the ice that covers them; study the molecules present in the moons; and analyze whether they have internal power sources, with special attention to Ganymede's magnetic field.
With all this it will be known which of these three moons can have the three essential ingredients for life: water, organic molecules and a source of energy. With the data available so far, Europa is considered to be the most promising, followed by Ganymede and, in third place, Callisto.
After its arrival in the Jupiter system in July 2031, Juice will spend three and a half years in orbit around the planet, during which it will fly over Callisto 21 times; Ganymede, 12 times; and Europe, twice. In November 2034, it will change its trajectory to orbit Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, which it will study for about a year.
The Juice observations will be complemented by those from NASA's Europa Clipper mission, which is due to launch in 2024 and reach the Jupiter system in 2030, a year before Juice. The NASA spacecraft must visit Europe 44 times over four years. However, it will not orbit the moon because it is so close to Jupiter that the planet's magnetic field would damage the spacecraft's instruments within a few months.
Based on the data provided by both missions, the space agencies will assess whether to send a mission designed to directly detect signs of life to one of Jupiter's moons by mid-century.
