The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch a satellite on Thursday that will study Jupiter and its three largest moons, using “made in Portugal” science and technology and having a Portuguese director of flight operations.
The launch from ESA’s space base in Kourou, French Guiana, where Portugal Space will be represented by Ricardo Conde, president of the space agency Portugal Space, will take place at 13:15 (Lisbon time) aboard the European Ariane 5 rocket.
The mission, due to launch in 2022, is led by Bruno Souza as Director of Flight Operations, and the satellite includes components made by LusoSpace, Active Space Technologies, Deimos Engenharia and FHP – Frezite High Performance, as well as an instrument partly developed by LIP – Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics.
JUICE (Jupiter ICy moons Explorer, Explorer of the Icy Moons of Jupiter) will study the largest planet in the solar system and the satellites of Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, where, according to scientists, liquid water (a fundamental element for life, as we know it) can exist ) under surface ice crusts.
The satellite should reach the gas “giant” in eight years, in July 2031, make 35 close flights to icy moons and reach Ganymede in December 2034.
This will be the first time that an artificial satellite will orbit a moon of another planet.
The ESA mission, which cost about 1.6 billion euros and involved the North American (NASA), Japanese (JAXA) and Israeli (ISA) space agencies in terms of instrumentation and “equipment”, is expected to end in September. 2035.
The first scientific data is expected in 2032.
Jupiter is 11 times the size of Earth and is mostly made up of gas, just like the Sun. Ganymede is the largest of the solar system’s moons, with a large ocean beneath its surface.
The ESA mission was designed to find out if there are sites around Jupiter and inside icy moons with the necessary conditions (water, energy, stability and biological elements) to support life.
Deimos Engenharia had the task of ensuring that the satellite would not reach “under any circumstances” either the planet Mars or the moon Europa, which Lusa explained are in the “maximum planetary protection category for extraterrestrial bodies” that could “potentially harbor life.” “.
On the other hand, the company’s work “was to improve the mission’s basic autonomous navigation strategy during the Europa flyby and during the orbital phase of Ganymede.”
One of the various instruments installed on the satellite is a radiation monitor developed by LIP and Efacec in collaboration with the Norwegian company Ideas and the Swiss research institute Paul Scherrer.
Researcher Paula Gonçalves, who coordinated the project at LIP, explained to Lusa that the instrument “serves to measure the ionizing radiation environment” that the satellite will be exposed to during its trajectory, “with the ability to send warning signals to protect other detectors.” and systems” on the satellite.
The radiation monitor, being an energy particle detector, “also enables scientific measurements and complements those of other instruments” aboard the satellite.
LIP was also responsible for an ESA project to test the irradiation of the electronic components that make up the satellite to ensure they are ready to “withstand the high doses of radiation expected in Jupiter’s magnetosphere”.
Another JUICE instrument is the magnetometer, a device that in this case will characterize Jupiter’s strong magnetic field and its interaction with the field of the moon Ganymede.
LusoSpace has developed a coil that, company chief executive Yvo Yves Vieira told Lusa, generates a magnetic field “which will be the reference for Jupiter’s magnetic field meter.”
In addition to shields that protect sensitive electronic components from high radiation, solar panels for power supply and an insulating layer from extreme temperatures, the satellite has an antenna to send data to Earth and a computer to solve some problems on its own.
The antenna has a coating produced by Porto-based FHP and its operating mechanism was developed by Coimbra-based Active Space Technologies.
The JUICE satellite will be the last mission sent by ESA from French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, to be replaced by an Ariane 6 model.
Currently, the only artificial satellite orbiting Jupiter is NASA’s Juno.
Portugal has been a member state of the ESA since 2000.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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