ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) is ready for fuelling. This timelapse shows the spacecraft leaving the Payload Preparation Facility and being transferred to the Hazardous Processing Facility, where the fuelling operations will take place. This marks a major milestone in the launch campaign. Launch is planned for mid-April.
Juice is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. It will make detailed observations of gas giant Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. This ambitious mission will characterise these moons with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.
Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit
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Source: ESA Top Multimedia