Move over Europa. It's Ganymede's time to shine. 📷: esa
have gotten lots of love from space probes dispatched by curious Earthlings. Now it’s Ganymede’s turn.
Ganymede is Jupiter’s largest moon, and it is thought to be an “ocean world”—a place with underground water that could be habitable for alien life-forms, despite the cold and its vast distance from the sun. The European Space Agency wants to zoom in on it with the, or Juice, which is scheduled to launch at 8:15 am Eastern time on April 13 from the agency’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Its ambitious science mission will begin when it arrives at the Jupiter system in 2031.
But the probe has to get there first. The solar-powered robotic explorer has a long flight to make, and it’s not a direct one. Since it’s a fairly heavy spacecraft, itto reach its destination, Witasse says. It will make an Earth flyby next year, slingshot around Venus in 2025, and make two more Earth flybys after that. Finally, it will have picked up enough speed and be on the right trajectory. That itinerary adds up to an eight-year journey to Jupiter.
The gas giant, which never became massive enough to ignite fusion reactions in its core like a small star, nevertheless possesses a menagerie of more than 90 moons, making it a mini solar system in its own right. Juice will probe Jupiter’s trio of icy moons, all thought to be ocean worlds. There’s, which may have volcanic activity underground and oceans just a few miles below the surface. Then there’s Callisto, a frigid, geologically dead moon in comparison.
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