dpa
Darmstadt, Germany
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) has successfully completed the world’s first-ever lunar-Earth flyby, using Earth’s gravity to send it on a shortcut to Jupiter via Venus, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported on Wednesday.
After first flying past the moon, Juice pivoted to zoom just 6,840km above South East Asia and the Pacific Ocean, taking images with its onboard monitoring cameras and collecting scientific data with eight of its 10 instruments, ESA said from its operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
"The gravity assist flyby was flawless, everything went without a hitch, and we were thrilled to see Juice coming back so close to Earth,” Ignacio Tanco, operations manager for the mission, said.
ESA described the manoeuvre as "inherently risky” but added it was saving the mission around 100-150 kilograms of fuel. This meant that Juice had extra fuel to get closer to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede than originally planned.
"Thanks to very precise navigation by ESA’s flight dynamics team, we managed to use only a tiny fraction of the propellant reserved for this flyby. This will add to the margins we keep for a rainy day, or to extend the science mission once we get to Jupiter,” Ignacio said.
The timing and location of the double flyby had allowed ESA to study the behaviour of Juice’s instruments, ESA’s Claire Vallat said.
Juice launched on an Ariane 5 from Kourou in April 2023 on an eight-year cruise mission with flybys of Earth and Venus to slingshot it to Jupiter. It will make 35 flybys of the three large moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, before heading for orbit around Ganymede.
The mission around Jupiter is scheduled to take place between 2031 and 2035.