(CNN) –– The European Space Agency’s Juice mission is about to reach two historic milestones on its long journey to study the possible habitability of Jupiter’s icy moons.
The Juice spacecraft, or Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, which was launched in April 2023, will carry out this Monday and Tuesday the first successive flyby of the Moon and the Earth and the first double gravity assist maneuver. This process will serve as a slingshot that will allow Earth’s gravity to slow Juice’s current trajectory and redirect it to fly past Venus in August 2025.
Juice will then be able to take a shortcut through the solar system and be on track to reach Jupiter and its moons in July 2031.
Juice will first pass by Earth’s moon on August 19 at 5:16 pm ET, and then will pass by Earth almost 25 hours later, at 5:57 pm ET on August 20. The space agency will provide a animated spaceship trackingand some people with binoculars or telescopes in Southeast Asia will be able to see Juice as it flies directly over Earth.
Meanwhile, Juice’s two cameras will take pictures during the flyby and send them back to Earth, to later be published in the agency site.
But pioneering maneuvers are also incredibly daring and challenging, and one small mistake could send Juice off course and end the mission.
“It’s like going through a very narrow hallway, very, very fast: stepping on the accelerator to the maximum when the margin on the side of the road is just millimeters,” explained Ignacio Tanco, Juice Spacecraft Operations Manager, in a statement. .
On average, Jupiter is 800 million kilometers from Earth, so getting there without a hugely powerful rocket or thousands of liters of fuel on board requires careful mission planning. And the plan for Juice’s trip has been 20 years in the making.
By using the gravity of planets like Earth and Venus, the necessary adjustments can be made to Juice’s trajectory to put him in the right direction and at the optimal speed that will allow him to reach Jupiter and enter orbit without zooming past the planet.
Gravitational assists can speed up or slow down spacecraft, depending on how they are used, and allow them to conserve fuel and equip spacecraft with a host of scientific instruments.
The double pass by Earth and the Moon will slow down Juice enough so that it can fly by Venus and get an energy boost next year before circling our planet twice to get more boosts, according to the agency.
Small adjustments to Juice’s flight pattern allowed the spacecraft to reach the Moon and Earth at the right time and speed, getting extremely close to both. Juice will first pass 700 kilometers from the surface of the Moon and then fly 6,807 kilometers from the surface of the Earth.
The Moon’s gravity will slightly deflect Juice’s trajectory so that it receives much greater gravitational assistance from Earth. But every detail of the double flyby must be perfect.
“For a typical gravity assist, spacecraft operations must be extremely precise,” Angela Dietz, operations engineer for the Juice spacecraft, said in a statement. “For a double flyby, they have to be exact.”
Operators using ground stations around the world will closely monitor Juice data before, during and after the flyby to make necessary adjustments at any time.
The flight control team trained and rehearsed for the flyby in case if any anomaly occurs, they can get Juice back on track quickly.
“A flyby of the Moon to Earth has never been attempted before,” Dietz said. “There are risks, but all systems on board Juice have been rigorously tested and we are well prepared.”
Although Juice was designed to explore the cold, dark areas of the solar system near Jupiter, it will be closer to the sun during the flyby and will need to tilt its solar panels to avoid overheating. The spacecraft will also point its high-gain antenna toward the sun to act as a heat shield, while its low-gain antenna will remain pointed toward Earth to relay communications during the flyby.
Telescopes and observatories were tracking Juice’s approach all summer.
On July 6, an object triggered NASA and ESA’s automated warning systems that monitor the presence of potentially hazardous asteroids. It is estimated that the object was 50 meters in diameter and was about to pass very close to the Earth and the Moon.
But it was actually Juice, and since it has large reflective solar panels, the spaceship It looked much bigger and brighter.like an asteroid. The agencies confirmed that Juice poses no risk to Earth or the Moon during its passage.
Juice will also activate its 10 scientific instruments during the double flyby to calibrate them before reaching Jupiter. In addition to testing the instruments, the mission team could also make some discoveries about the Earth and Moon while the instruments are operational.
The RIME team, running the Radar for Icy Moon Exploration instrument, is eager to collect data on electronic noise inside the spacecraft that appears to disturb the instrument. This could be one of the few opportunities to measure any impact on the instrument before it reaches Jupiter.
During the flyby, RIME will take eight minutes to make observations while the other instruments turn off or go into silent mode, and that data could help the mission team solve the noise problem.
