Airbus Finalises JUICE Ready for Its Mission to Jupiter

Brief:

• Satellite ready to leave Europe before its launch in April.
• Galileo tribute plaque unveiled in Airbus’ cleanroom and mounted on the spacecraft.
• ESA’s mission will study Jupiter’s three largest icy moons and the Jovian system’s magnetic fields.

PRESS RELEASE — Toulouse / January 20, 2023 – The Airbus-built JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer mission) spacecraft will shortly leave Toulouse, France, for Kourou, French Guiana, for lift-off on an Ariane 5 in April 2023. Shipment is expected in early February.

The spacecraft has been at Airbus in Toulouse since August 2021 for final assembly and test. This included integration of the final instrument units and the largest solar arrays ever to fly on a planetary exploration mission, needed to power the mission at 740 million kilometres from the Sun.

Today a commemorative plaque was unveiled during a press event in Toulouse as a tribute to Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. The plaque has been mounted on the spacecraft to honour Galileo who was the first to view Jupiter and its largest moons through a telescope in 1610.

On its more than 2 billion-kilometre  long journey, the 6.2 ton JUICE spacecraft will collect data on the icy moons to try to understand whether there is any possibility that these moons could host microbial life. Carrying 10 state-of-the-art scientific instruments, including cameras, spectrometers, an ice-penetrating radar, an altimeter, a radio-science experiment, and sensors, the JUICE spacecraft will complete a unique tour of the Jupiter system that will include in-depth studies of three potentially ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Europa and Callisto.During its four year-long mission, JUICE will spend nine months orbiting the icy moon Ganymede analysing its nature and evolution, characterising its subsurface ocean, and investigating its potential habitability.

After being selected by ESA as prime contractor in 2015 Airbus has led a pan European industrial consortium to design and build this unique spacecraft.

For more information about JUICE, please visit our dedicated pages:
https://www.airbus.com/en/products-services/space/exploration/solar-system/juice

Phone: +49 171 304 9751
[email protected]

Phone: +33 6 34 78 14 08
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Phone: +44 776 653 6572
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Phone: +34 630 196 993
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SOURCE: Airbus