A spacecraft launched last year will slingshot back around Earth and the Moon next month in a high-stakes, world-first maneuver as it pinballs its way through the Solar System to Jupiter.
The European Space Agency’s Juice probe blasted off in April 2023 on a mission to discover whether Jupiter’s icy moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa are capable of hosting extra-terrestrial life in their vast, hidden oceans.
The uncrewed six-tonne spacecraft is currently 10 million kilometers (six million miles) from Earth.
But it will fly back past the Moon then Earth on August 19-20, using their gravity boosts to save fuel on its winding, eight-year odyssey to Jupiter.
Staff at the ESA’s space operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany began preparing for the complicated manoeuvre this week.
Juice is expected to arrive at Jupiter’s system in July 2031.
It will take the scenic route. NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch this October yet beat Juice to Jupiter’s moons by a year.
Juice is taking the long way round in part because the Ariane 5 rocket used to launch the mission was not powerful enough for a straight shot to Jupiter, which is roughly 800 million kilometers away.
Without an enormous rocket, sending Juice straight to Jupiter would require 60 tonnes of onboard propellant – and Juice has just three tonnes, according to the ESA.
“The only solution is to use gravitational assists,” Arnaud Boutonnet, the ESA’s head of analysis for the mission, told AFP.
By flying close to planets, spacecrafts can take advantage of their gravitational pull, which can change its course, speed it up or slow it down.
Many other space missions have used planets for gravity boosts, but next month’s Earth-Moon flyby will be a “world first,” the ESA said.
Juice will cross 750 kilometres above the Moon on August 19, before shooting past Earth the following day.
