Thursday, January 15, 2015

ESA's JUICE at Europa

Late in 2030, Europe’s Jupiter Icy moon Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft will twice zoom past Europa, a world that has all the ingredients to harbor life. During the minutes of each closest flyby, it will study an areas identified from images taken in the 1990s by the Galileo spacecraft as locations of recent geological activity. Then after those two encounters, the spacecraft will move on to study Jupiter and the moons Ganymede and Callisto. Unless another space agency commits to another mission that will visit Europa, this will be our only chance to explore Europa in the next several decades. (But see the note at the end of this post.)

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