Europe's Mission to the Ocean Moons
JUICE — the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer — is ESA's flagship mission to the outer solar system and the largest interplanetary spacecraft the agency has ever built, spanning 27 metres across its solar arrays. It will spend years studying Jupiter and three of its large moons — Ganymede, Callisto and Europa — worlds thought to hide vast liquid-water oceans beneath their icy crusts.
A Long Road to Jupiter
JUICE cannot fly straight to Jupiter; it relies on a series of gravity assists — including the first-ever Lunar–Earth double flyby in August 2024 and a Venus flyby in 2025 — to build up speed. After arriving in 2031 it will make dozens of moon flybys before, in 2034, becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit a moon other than our own when it settles into orbit around Ganymede.