A historic mission to search for signs of alien life on Jupiter’s icy moons has launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
The Juice spacecraft has been carried skyward by an Ariane 5 rocket, beginning an eight-year journey to the gas giant’s orbit via flybys of Earth and Venus.
Its successful launch today followed a delay to the mission. The craft had been due to launch on Thursday but the decision was made to postpone because of bad weather.
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How the launch unfolded
All you need to know about Juice
Juice’s quest will include detailed observations of Jupiter‘s moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, which all have their own oceans that scientists believe could support life.
They have the greatest known reserves of water outside Earth.
Thursday’s launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) came at a cost of £1.4bn, with years of research and development going into ensuring the craft can operate in such a dark corner of the galaxy.
Engineers developed new types of solar cells to help power Juice in a part of space that enjoys just 3% of the illumination Earth gets from the sun.
Earth is about 93 million miles from the sun, and Jupiter isn’t far off 500 million miles away from our solar system’s star.
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Juice (or Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) is one of two major missions to our Solar System’s largest planet – the other is NASA’s Europa Clipper, launching in 2024.
While Juice will be the first to explore them, NASA’s craft will beat it to its final destination.
It’s due to insert itself into Jupiter’s orbit in 2030 – a year ahead of Juice thanks to taking a shorter route.
