SwRI DELIVERS ULTRAVIOLET INSTRUMENT FOR ESA’S JUPITER MISSION

An ultraviolet spectrograph (UVS) designed and built by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is the first scientific instrument to be delivered for integration onto the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft. Scheduled to launch in 2022 and arrive at Jupiter in 2030, JUICE will spend at least three years making detailed observations in the Jovian system before going into orbit around the solar system’s largest moon, Ganymede.

Aboard JUICE, UVS will get close-up views of the Galilean moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, all thought to host liquid water beneath their icy surfaces. UVS will record ultraviolet light emitted, transmitted and reflected by these bodies, revealing the composition of their surfaces and tenuous atmospheres and how they interact with Jupiter and its giant magnetosphere.

“It has been a huge team effort to get this instrument — known as JUICE-UVS — built, tested and delivered,” said Steven Persyn, project manager for JUICE-UVS and an assistant director in SwRI’s Space Science and Engineering Division. “In 2013, UVS was selected to represent NASA on the first ESA-led mission to an outer planet. Meeting both NASA’s and ESA’s specifications was challenging, but we did it.”

UVS will be one of 10 science instruments and 11 investigations for the JUICE mission. The mission has overarching goals of investigating potentially habitable worlds around the gas giant, as well as, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants in our solar system and beyond.

SwRI has provided ultraviolet spectrographs for other spacecraft, including ESA’s Rosetta comet orbiter, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Juno spacecraft now orbiting Jupiter. Another UVS is under construction for NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, scheduled to launch not long after JUICE.

“JUICE-UVS is the fifth in this series of SwRI-built ultraviolet spectrographs, and it benefits greatly from the design experience gained by our team from the Juno-UVS instrument, which is currently operating in Jupiter’s harsh radiation environment,” Persyn said. “Each successive instrument we build is more capable than its predecessor.”

JUICE is the first large-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015–2025 program. The spacecraft and science instruments are being built by teams from 15 European countries, Japan and the United States. SwRI’s UVS instrument team includes additional scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder, the SETI institute, the University of Leicester (UK), Imperial College London (UK), the University of Liège (Belgium), and the Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (France). The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center oversees the UVS contribution to ESA through the agency’s Solar System Exploration Program. The JUICE spacecraft is being developed by Airbus Defence and Space.  

Quelle: Southwest Research Institute

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Update: 9.04.2020

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Here's how Europe's JUICE spacecraft will look for alien oceans

One of the top priorities for scientists looking to find life beyond Earth is determining which icy worlds in the outer solar system hide massive global oceans under their frozen surfaces.

And a European Space Agency (ESA) mission scheduled to launch in 2022 will work to do just that. Called the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), the spacecraft will tour the Jupiter system, specifically observing three of the planet's largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Scientists aren't yet sure, but they suspect that all three might be hiding massive oceans.

"We have good reasons to believe that they host an internal subsurface ocean underneath the icy crust," Olivier Witasse, a planetary scientist at ESA on the JUICE project, said during a presentation coordinated by the National Academies of Sciences on March 31. The JUICE mission is designed to provide the data scientists need to determine whether those oceans exist.

The JUICE team aims to address that question using a few different methods.

One of the spacecraft's techniques is straightforward but only applies to one of Jupiter's moons. Scientists suspect, but haven't confirmed, that Europa may be shooting plumes out through its icy crust. If that is the case, JUICE may be able to fly through those plumes and study the liquid they contain during its two passes over the world. "We need to be lucky," Witasse said. "The plumes need to be there, it's still a matter of debate."

JUICE's other tactics are less subject to luck and are not limited to Europa, he said. Witasse walked through how the spacecraft's tactics will play out at Ganymede, the only moon that JUICE will directly orbit, as an example of the mission's methods.

First, there's a long-standing approach, which relies on measuring the magnetic field around a moon. If a bunch of liquid that conducts electricity is sloshing around inside a world, it interferes with the magnetic field of both the moon itself and Jupiter's in a way that should allow JUICE to measure it. However, with this method, JUICE will need to take measurements throughout its entire stay in the Jupiter system to produce enough data. A previous NASA mission, Galileo, which explored the Jupiter system between 1995 and 2003, carried a similar instrument.

JUICE will also measure how each of Jupiter's moons is stretched by tidal interactions with other worlds in the system. Jupiter is so massive that it tugs on all four of its large moons, and three of those moons orbit in such synchronized choreography that they exert serious pulls on each other.

And just as Earth's dance with the moon creates tides, all of this tugging around should distort Jupiter's moons. That should remain true whether or not these moons have oceans, but the magnitude of these tides would be different if they are ocean worlds or not — to the tune of tides just 3 feet (1 meter) high for an ocean-free moon compared to perhaps between 26 feet (8 m) and 33 feet (10 m) for an ocean world, Witasse said.

"That's a powerful technique to measure what is inside the icy moons," he said — although it will require the spacecraft to approach the moon quite closely and to map the full surface multiple times. These requirements mean that the Ganymede measurements will likely not be taken until the last phase of the mission, three months during which JUICE is in its lowest orbit around the moon.

JUICE's last technique for searching for alien oceans is perhaps also its strangest. This method relies on measurements of the auroras that ring, for example, Ganymede's poles. These dazzling lights don't circle the moon's poles totally symmetrically, instead, they are tilted like the brim of a hat perched askew, spinning around the moon.

According to scientists' models, the degree to which that ring wobbles will vary based on the moon's internal structure, influenced by the same magnetic field changes that the first technique will target. The band will wobble about three times more if no ocean is hidden below the moon's icy shell. And that technique should require fewer measurements than some of JUICE's other options.

None of these methods will quickly resolve scientists' questions about these distant worlds, of course, since deep-space exploration takes time. JUICE is currently scheduled to launch in 2022, then will take more than seven years to reach the Jupiter system. If the spacecraft launches on time, it will conduct the bulk of its observations between 2029 and 2033.

Quelle: SC

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Update: 26.04.2020

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Jupiter probe JUICE: Final integration in full swing

Completion of ESA´s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer spacecraft has begun at Airbus satellite centre Friedrichshafen

Friedrichshafen, 23 April 2020 – JUICE, the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer mission, has reached its next milestone: On its Earthly journey via different Airbus sites in Europe the spacecraft has arrived at Airbus’ satellite integration centre in Friedrichshafen (Germany) for final integration. Until the end of 2020 it will be kitted out with its final components including harness, power electronics, onboard computer, communication systems, navigation sensors, thermal hardware and its scientific instruments. Next stop: Noordwijk, The Netherlands, the home of the European Space Agency´s space test centre ESTEC, where the probe has to undergo its thermal vaccum environmental test campaign to prove it is ready for its journey via Venus and Mars to Jupiter and its mission in the Jovian system.

The 5.2 tonne JUICE spacecraft will set off in May 2022 on its near 600 million-kilometre-long journey to Jupiter with a planned arrival date of October 2029. The spacecraft will carry 10 state-of-the-art scientific instruments, including cameras, spectrometers, an ice-penetrating radar, an altimeter, radio-science experiment, and sensors to monitor the magnetic fields and charged particles in the Jovian system. JUICE will complete a unique tour of the Jupiter system that will include in-depth studies of three potentially ocean-bearing moons, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto.

Over the last few months the JUICE structure, built and assembled by Airbus in Madrid, has been completed with its chemical propulsion system at ArianeGroup’s site in Lampoldshausen (Germany) to form the spacecraft body. ArianeGroup’s Orbital Propulsion teams have developed, produced and integrated the propulsion system, which includes two titanium propellant tanks and the 400-newton main engine that will be used for Jupiter orbit insertion, and a further 20 small thrusters.

During a night ride a special transporter carried the heavy and oversized load safely to the integration centre in Friedrichshafen. Airbus has now set up a special two shift working pattern for up to 60 engineers to ensure on time delivery - even in Corona influenced times.

In parallel the full size engineering model of JUICE has been integrated and is at Airbus’ satellite integration centre in Toulouse for full functional software testing, prior to installation on the flight model in Friedrichshafen.

JUICE will spend more than three years in the Jupiter system, collecting data to provide answers on the conditions for planet formation and the emergence of life. It will spend nine months orbiting the icy moon Ganymede analysing its nature and evolution, and its potential habitability.

As prime contractor, Airbus is leading an industrial consortium of more than 80 companies across Europe.

Quelle: AIRBUS

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Jupiter explorer Juice arrives for final integration

ESA’s upcoming JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft arrives at the satellite integration centre of the project’s prime contractor Airbus in Friedrichshafen, Germany, in April 2020, to undergo final integration.

Quelle: ESA

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Update: 23.08.2020

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Swedish space technology ready to explore oceans under the ice on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede

Now the first of two Swedish-led Jupiter instruments has left the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) to take its place on the European spacecraft JUICE. The Radio & Plasma Wave Investigation instrument (RPWI) will measure electric and magnetic fields to identify and map the oceans beneath the frozen ice cover of the moon Ganymede.

In 2013, IRF was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to participate in one of their largest projects in planetary exploration. Since then, Sweden and IRF have been responsible for two of then instruments on board JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer). In 2022, the spacecraft will be sent to Jupiter and the Galilean moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, three moons with oceans beneath their thick ice sheets.

Scientist Jan-Erik Wahlund at IRF’s office in Uppsala is responsible for Radio & Plasma Wave Investigation (RPWI), an instrument package with several sensors for measuring electric and magnetic fields and electrically charged particles.

“The instrument is designed to investigate, in particular, how Jupiter’s magnetosphere interacts with the atmospheres of the icy moons. We primarily hope to identify and map how Ganymede’s ocean flows under the ice sheet and what processes keep it going. With RPWI, we will not be able to detect any life in the oceans, but where there is liquid water, there are opportunities for life,” says Jan-Erik Wahlund.

RPWI will contribute to the mapping of Jupiter’s and Ganymede’s entire magnetospheres. The scientists hope to get more information about how the moons work in detail, but also to study, for example, radio radiation emitted from Jupiter’s surroundings.

In addition, JUICE will be the first spacecraft ever to orbit around the giant planet’s largest moon, Ganymede. The scientists know that the moon’s own magnetic field generates strong electric fields that give rise to, among other things, aurora particles.

IRF researcher Jan Bergman is pleased to be a part of space science and space technology which will place Sweden, with instrumental and scientific contributions from many other countries, in another part of the solar system.

“Amazing people of all nationalities have contributed. Everyone at RPWI is very proud of this melting pot of international professionalism”, says Jan Bergman.

RPWI has instrument contributions from nine institutions in five countries (Sweden, France, Czech Republic, Poland and Japan), and controbutions from severals companies (eg RUAG, SSC, ÅAC Microtec, Meisei, Astronika and PZL) plus scientific support from 20 institutions in eight countries (those above and Germany, Austria and the UK). ESA itself also supports several significant contributions. The spacecraft is made by Airbus.

JUICE will be launched on an Ariane-5 rocket from French Guiana in 2022. The journey will take eight years.

Quelle: Swedish Institute of Space Physics 

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Update: 8.05.2021

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Juice arrives at ESA’s technical heart