The £1.4 billion probe will be launched into space on Thursday afternoon to search for signs of life around Jupiter.
Some scientists believe this is the best chance of finding extraterrestrial life in our solar system: the spacecraft will skip relatively nearby Mars and instead head for the icy moons of distant Jupiter, which is much deeper in space.
It will take eight years to get there, but the data it will be transmitting from 2031 hope to provide “impressive” insight into how life reached the solar system.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – or Juice – is probing the planet’s vast water reserves on the planet’s three oceanic moons to see if they’re habitable.
They are believed to contain more liquid water than Earth’s oceans, which are considered the main component of life on this planet.
The mission to Jupiter, which averages 444 million miles from Earth, will be launched from French Guiana and operated by the European Space Agency.
UK scientists are playing a key role, leading the development of one of the spacecraft’s 10 instruments.
Experts from Imperial College London have led the development of a magnetometer, known as the J-MAG, that will measure the properties of the magnetic fields of Jupiter and its largest moon, Ganymede.
It will also play a key role in detecting moving salts in the oceans under Ganymede’s ice crust and studying Jupiter’s other moons, Europa and Callisto.
The data will help characterize the depth and salinity of Ganymede’s ocean to see if it can support life.
“Thanks to measurements with our instrument, we are almost peering into these worlds,” says Professor Michel Dougherty of Imperial College London and principal investigator at J-MAG.
“However, what we are doing is extremely difficult because the signals we are trying to detect are extremely small.
“It’s like trying to find many needles in a haystack, and those needles keep changing shape and color. But we believe the results will be impressive.”
Professor Dougherty said patience is a virtue in this project, which is approaching an exciting milestone, but there is still work to be done.
“Space missions are long and slow, so launching is only half the battle – because we first thought about it 15 years ago, and we will have the most recent data in 15 years. But I’m looking forward to the launch because it’s the next milestone for us: we’re on our way to Jupiter.”
The idea that the best chance of finding extraterrestrial life is on Jupiter’s icy moons seemed unlikely until a few decades ago. Back then, Venus and Mars were considered the best hopes for finding life in the solar system far from Earth.
But since then, the surface temperature of Venus has apparently been 475°C, and Mars lost its atmosphere and surface water billions of years ago. Attempts to find surviving underground reserves on the Red Planet have so far been unsuccessful.
Jupiter’s three main moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – contain vast oceans of liquid water, the only requirement for life on Earth. The water is under the ice but can still support life.
Professor Dougherty and her team will be working with experts from the University of Leicester and University College London (UCL).
Professor Emma Bunce, director of the Space Institute at the University of Leicester and co-author of J-MAG, said: “After many years of hard work by scientific, engineering and industrial teams, we are very pleased that the Juice mission is complete. finally complete your launch preparations and begin your long journey to the Jupiter system.
“We will be patiently waiting for the incredible data we expect to see from 2031 and we are confident that the wait will be worth it.”
In addition to the J-MAG, the Leicester scientists will also be collaborating with other experts on two other instruments on Juice: MAJIS (Moon and Jupiter Imaging Spectrometer), which will observe cloud and atmospheric features on Jupiter; and UVS (UV Imaging Spectrograph), which will characterize the composition and dynamics of the exospheres of icy satellites.
UCL’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) also provided particle detectors for the Juice Particle Environment Package (PEP) instrument, which will collect data on the “soup” of ions, electrons and atoms around Jupiter and its moons.
Professor Geraint Jones of MSSL and co-inventor of the PEP instrument said: “These data will help us understand, for example, how particles around Jupiter reach such high energies — energies that could be lethal to an astronaut.
Source: I News
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