Jupiter Mission Passes Space Vacuum Test
ESA’s Juice Jupiter mission has successfully endured a month of space-like conditions inside the Large Space Simulator, the largest vacuum chamber in Europe.
At 10 meters wide and 15 meters high, the Large Space Simulator (LSS) is big enough to accommodate an upended London double decker bus. It is part of ESA’s ESTEC Test Center in the Netherlands, the largest satellite testing facility in Europe.
The flight model of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, was exposed to vacuum a billion times lower than standard seal level pressure, along with representative temperature extremes the spacecraft will encounter on its journey to Jupiter, ranging from 250°C to -180 °C. The LSS’s artificial Sun simulator recreated the searing sunlight Juice will experience during its 88-month cruise phase, which will include a flyby of Venus. Liquid nitrogen circulating through the walls of the chamber mimicked the chill of deep space.
After a month of round-the-clock monitoring, the chamber doors were opened on July 15th. Next the spacecraft will return to Airbus Defence and Space in France, for final preparations for its launch next year.
JUICE will ride into space on an Ariane launch vehicle. The launch period for JUICE will start in mid-2022 aboard an Ariane 5 or an Ariane 64 launch vehicle – depending on the final launch slot from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, South America.
The Jupiter mission satellite will have a mass at liftoff of approximately six metric tons and will be placed in an Earth escape orbit in a direction to Jupiter starting a journey of 373 million miles. After a 7.5-year cruise, which includes gravitational assists from Earth, Venus and Mars, the spacecraft will enter orbit around the giant planet in October 2029.
Once in the Jovian system Juice will make detailed observations of Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. The mission will investigate the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants and the Jupiter system as an archetype for the numerous giant exoplanets now known to orbit other stars.
(Image and Video provided with ESA news release)
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