Airbus has announced the JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) has "spread its wings" after the successful take-off for Jupiter on April 14, a day after bad weather caused a 24-hour postponement,
"The Airbus-built JUICE is now officially on its way to Jupiter!", the French aerospace company announced, with more equipment and instruments to "be progressively turned on in the next few days" amid tests by the operations team "to make sure they are all fully operational".
The journey is expected to take eight years, after which the vessel will be in the Jupiter area for four years.
“After years of work, watching this launch live from our sites across Europe was a very emotional moment for all those who have worked on this incredible mission. This is the best of Europe coming together!” said Michael Schöllhorn, chief executive of Airbus Defence and Space, which designed and built the 6.2 tonne JUICE under a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA).
The 5 billion kilometre long journey will see the JUICE make fly-bys of the moons Callisto, Ganymede and Europa, during which it will be "collecting data to try to understand whether there is any possibility that the moons and their subsurface oceans 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, a particle package and various magnetic and electric field sensors, the JUICE spacecraft will complete a unique four-year tour of the Jupiter system," Airbus said.