“JUICE Spacecraft’s Radar Antenna Jams, Causing Deployment Issues During Jupiter Mission: ESA”

SPACE — The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft is struggling to spread its antennae in space. According to ESA officials, the radar antenna on one of the JUICE instruments is jammed.

“The problem could make the difference to releasing other radars,” the ESA official wrote Friday, April 28, 2023. However, he said, the team working on the antenna had many options to overcome the bottleneck.

JUICE is the flagship European mission designed to penetrate the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon using radar. Meanwhile, the problem is the antenna Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) tasked with looking for signs of habitable conditions for life in the waters beneath the ice sheet.

Scroll to read

Scroll to read

The $1.1 billion JUICE was launched on April 14, 2023 and is expected to arrive in the Jupiter system in July 2031. It will spend years flying around Jupiter’s icy moons. JUICE will learn more about the moon’s potentially life-friendly environment.

Ten of the spacecraft’s 11 instruments are working well so far. Only RIME antennas have been known to get stuck in their mounting brackets. Engineers suspect a small snagged pin has prevented its expansion. Read: Why Does the European JUICE Plane Take 8 Years to Jupiter?

“Various options are still available to remove the important instrument from its current position. “Next steps include firing the engines to slightly rock the spacecraft, followed by a series of rotations that will turn the JUICE, warming the body and radar, which are currently in the cold shadows,” the ESA official wrote.

Commissioning, or the first steps towards getting the spacecraft ready for its mission, is underway for the next two months. The ESA official emphasized that there is still plenty of time for the team to resolve the RIME deployment issues.

Assuming the 16 meter antenna isn’t stuck, JUICE will be able to see as far as 9 meters below the surface of Jupiter’s moons like Ganymede or Europa. Europa, in particular, has shown signs of the water it spewed out into space, suggesting its ice has exposure to an external environment.

This isn’t the first time the Jovian mission has faced antenna problems. NASA’s Galileo mission was never able to properly set up a high-gain antenna before visiting Jupiter and its icy moons between 1995 and 2003. The mission is still sending data back to Earth, but at a slower rate than planned. Source: Space.com

Also read:

Alien Search Plane Launch, JUICE ESA Blocked by Lightning Strike

Why Does the European JUICE Plane Take 8 Years to Jupiter?

How long does it take to get to Jupiter?

Shifting Saturn, Jupiter Now Owns the Most Moons in the Solar System