JUICE, the ESA spacecraft mission to Jupiter’s icy moons by Prof Michele Dougherty

JUICE - JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – was successfully launched from Kourou in French Guiana in April 2023. It will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and three of its largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Iconic missions to the outer solar system like Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo, and Cassini gave us a close look at the giant planets’ largest moons. Once thought of as inactive, cold conglomerates of ice and rock, we know that these distant moons are planet-like worlds with rich histories. While our search for life in the universe was once restricted to Earth-like planets, with terrestrial atmospheres and surface oceans, such icy moons with potentially habitable underground oceans offer new horizons. Jupiter’s three largest icy moons — Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — all show hints of hosting liquid water oceans beneath their crusts. On Earth, life thrives in the deepest, darkest parts of our oceans near hydrothermal vents. Could life similarly evolve or survive in the oceans floors of these moons? The European Space Agency’s (ESA) boldest mission to date aims to find out.

Biography

Michele Dougherty is a Professor of Space Physics at Imperial College London. She is leading unmanned exploratory missions to Saturn and Jupiter and was the Principal Investigator for the magnetometer instrument onboard the Cassini mission to Saturn as well as being the Principal Investigator the magnetometer for the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) of the European Space Agency that launched in April 2023. She is Head of the Physics Department, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Geophysics Gold medal in 2017, was awarded a CBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List and was awarded the Institute of Physics Richard Glazebrook Gold Medal and Prize.