NASA approves instruments for ESA’s Jupiter mission

NASA approves instruments for ESA’s Jupiter mission (विशेष कार्य)

NASA has approved a project to build instruments for a future European Space Agency mission to Jupiter and its moons, scheduled for launch in 2022. ”NASA’s total cost for the project is $114.4 million,” the US space agency said in a statement. Designed to investigate the emergence(संकटकाल) of habitable worlds around gas giants, the JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is scheduled to launch in five years, arriving at Jupiter in October 2029.  JUICE will spend almost four years studying Jupiter’s giant magnetosphere, turbulent(अशांत) atmosphere, and its large icy moons Callisto, Ganymede and Europa, which are thought to have oceans of liquid water beneath their icy crusts.

The agency-level approval for the project to enter building phase of instruments also provides a baseline for the mission’s schedule and budget.  ”We’re pleased with the overall design of the instruments and we’re ready to begin implementation,” said Jim Green, Director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

 

“In the very near future, JUICE will go from the drawing board to instrument building and then on to the launch pad in 2022,” Green said. JUICE is a large-class mission — the first in ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program carrying a suite of 10 science instruments. 

NASA will provide the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS), and will also provide subsystems and components for two additional instruments: the Particle Environment Package (PEP) and the Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) experiment. The UVS was selected to observe the dynamics and atmospheric chemistry of the Jovian system, including its icy satellites and volcanic moon Io.  How will JUICE complement NASA’s Europa Clipper multiple flyby mission, also scheduled to launch in the early 2020s