Esa Targets Juice Probe To Ganymede In 2030

ARTIST'S CONCEPT OF AN IMPACT CRATER ON JUPITER'S MOON GANYMEDE, WITH JUPITER ON THE HORIZON

On May 2, 2012 at a meeting in Paris, ESA's Science Program Committee voted to go ahead with the 1.1 billion USD project, the JUPITER Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), the first European-led mission to the outer solar system, and the first spacecraft destined to orbit an icy moon. The JUICE spacecraft is scheduled to launch in 2022, arriving in the Jupiter system in 2030, notes London's IMPERAL COLLEGE.

The primary target of the mission is the solar system's largest moon, "GANYMEDE", an icy world 8% larger than the planet Mercury. Ganymede is unique within the solar system - it is thought to harbour a deep ocean under the icy crust, it has its own internally generated magnetic field, and it has an ancient surface littered with more individual types of crater than anywhere else in the solar system.

If moons are common features of giant planets around other stars, then Ganymede may represent a whole class of potentially habitable environments in our galaxy. JUICE will carry experiments designed to study the sub-surface ocean, the geology and composition of the surface, and its interaction with its plasma environment, to assess its potential as a habitable environment in our solar system. The spacecraft will also investigate Jupiter's other icy worlds, "CALLISTO" and "EUROPA", as well as the giant planet's complex atmosphere and extended magnetosphere.

"People probably don't realise that habitable zones don't necessarily need to be close to a star - in our case, close to the Sun," explained Prof Michele Dougherty, a Juice science team member from Imperial College London, UK, noting, "There are four conditions required for life to form. You need water; you need an energy source - so the ice can become liquid; you need the right chemistry - nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen; and the fourth thing you need is stability - a length of time that allows life to form"."

"The great thing about the icy moons in the Jupiter system is that we think those four conditions might exist there; and Juice will tell us if that is the case," she told BBC NEWS.