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No one man builds a spaceship.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer has just launched, and it would be easy for me to say that ESA
made it.
But while that is true, that glosses over the colossal process that took a vague idea
on a design board and turned it into a fully realised behemoth of metal and carbon fibre,
hurtling up through the atmosphere.
Building a probe like JUICE is a massive undertaking.
For JUICE, it was a task that involved 18 countries, 60 companies, 11 years, a 5-city
tour, and €350.8 million of technical expertise, equipment and resources.
By delving into the story of the creation of JUICE, we gain a greater appreciation for
the incredible process by which such craft are made.
JUICE launched on the 14th April 2023.
But that is only half the story.
I’m Alex McColgan, and you’re watching Astrum.
And it’s time to explore the first half of the journey of JUICE; the half that took
place before the probe even left Earth.
Jupiter’s icy moons – Callisto, Europa and Ganymede – hide a fascinating secret
beneath their surface.
All are thought to house deep subsurface oceans, some of them larger than the combined oceans
here on Earth.
These are of immense interest in the scientific community, as such large bodies of water could
potentially make these moons habitable.
Water and nutrients are two of the key ingredients for life.
We have deep-sea ecosystems here on Earth that thrive on nothing else.
Could microbes also have formed in the depths of the moons’ icy oceans?
Without more information about those oceans, it’s hard to tell.
What exactly do they look like?
What are their features?
What are they hiding?
Where is there liquid and where is there ice?
By better understanding these icy worlds, scientists can gain insight into how they
formed and evolved in the past, and can better predict the odds of life emerging in them
and other icy worlds outside our solar system.
As such, it was decided on the 2nd of May 2012 that a new mission to explore these moons
should be launched.
JUICE beat out budget proposals for a New Gravitational wave Observatory, and an Advanced
Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics, becoming the European Space Agency’s main focus for
a large-scale mission over 2015-2025.
But that decision needed refining.
JUICE was still only a partially formed idea.
Even once it was decided that Jupiter’s icy moons should be explored, the next question
was: what scientific instruments should JUICE carry to explore it?
So, just 28 days after JUICE was announced, ESA reached out to the wider scientific community,
asking them what they would like to see on JUICE.
In the end, 10 scientific instruments were selected, including cameras with spatial resolution
as fine as 2.5m/pixel, spectrometers picking up features down to a resolution of 75m, a
laser altimeter, and plasma and particle monitors.
A magnetometer would study Jupiter’s magnetic fields, and an ice-penetrating radar would
peer through its surface to see the structures that lay beneath.
These parts would be provided from various member states of the ESA, 16 nations in total:
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland,
Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.
Along with them, the US and Japan’s space agencies would also contribute.
Airbus Defence and Space was selected as the primary company in charge of building JUICE.
ESA had set the expectations for the mission, but it was up to Airbus to design, develop,
integrate, and test JUICE before delivering it to the Guiana Space Centre in France to
be launched.
And it would be no easy task.
JUICE would be a solar panelled probe working at the limits of how far from the Sun solar
panels could be expected to function.
At 740 million km, sunlight is so dim, it’s equivalent to about 3% of what we see on Earth.
The panels for JUICE would need to be massive – 85m2 – to provide JUICE the power it
needed for its various instruments.
Those instruments would need to be protected.
Jupiter’s environment is full of intense radiation, which will damage unshielded components.
Passing through its shadow is so cold, temperatures reach -250°C. But JUICE would be passing
Venus on its way to Jupiter, as part of one of many gravity assists, so also would need
to be able to endure hot temperatures.
It was there to study magnetic fields, so its own internal electronics couldn’t create
magnetic fields able to interfere with its sensors.
And as there was a chance it was heading to environments where life could thrive, the
utmost care had to be taken that no Earth-based bacteria would be introduced to those environments
once the mission was over, and JUICE crashed into the surface of Ganymede.
These designs took time, and it wasn’t until 2017 that Airbus felt that the designs were
complete.
Later that year, the first parts started to come to life.
One such part was RIME.
JUICE is a big craft, and its Radar for Icy Moon Exploration is a massive 16 m long.
It would be incredibly sensitive, able to see through 9km of ice to make out structural
details to a resolution of 50m.
Testing the part involved creating a model version of JUICE, and then hanging it below
a helicopter, which then flew it over the fields near Friedrichschafen, Germany.
I wonder how far into the Earth it was able to see?
It must have been a fun sight for any residents in the area.
Another model was heat-tested in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, at ESA’s main facility
for spacecraft development and testing; ESTEC.
JUICE’s parts would need to endure the freezing cold of space, so technicians there used liquid
nitrogen – they have 25,000L of it – to freeze the chamber down to -180°C. However,
JUICE would also be travelling near heat sources, so they simultaneously blasted it on one side
with an array of lamps and mirrors, raising its temperature to 200°C. The JUICE model,
fortunately, proved capable of enduring these incredible temperature variations.
However, these were just models.
The true JUICE – the one to be launched – began its life in Madrid.
There, in July 2019, its towering, 580kg chassis was assembled.
You really get a sense of the scale of the probe by seeing the technicians working alongside
it.
The completed JUICE weighs 5,300kg, although about 3000kg of that is the chemical propellant
it needs to complete its manoeuvres.
JUICE needs a lot of juice.
Just a month later, JUICE opened its eyes.
Its Navcam had been completed in Toulouse, and what better target for it to look at than
its eventual destination, Jupiter?
The image at this distance is a little pixellated, and the saturation of Jupiter is bright as
a consequence of trying to see Jupiter’s moons too.
But even before it was fully assembled, Juice had already set eyes on its target.
But the chassis was not ready to receive its eyes, yet.
First, it left Madrid, travelling across Europe to Lampoldshausen, Germany.
It would receive its thrusters there – one large 400 N main engine, and 20 smaller thrusters.
Next, it took a short trip to Friedrichschafen, where its technical equipment began to be
integrated into it.
This lengthy process took a whole year, as each piece was carefully added and tested.
Balloons were used to simulate weightlessness in space, allowing the massive 10m magnetic
boom to practice unfolding itself.
Like many craft, JUICE would need to fold itself in to be able to fit on the rocket
that would later carry it into space.
But finally this stage was complete.
Of course, this meant more testing was in order.
JUICE was taken to ESTEC, as it was home to the largest vacuum chamber in Europe, the
Large Space Simulator (LLS).
Getting the large JUICE into the even larger LLS was the work of two days.
Finally, though, after careful transporting using massive crane equipment, JUICE began
its testing.
Meanwhile, its components such as its antenna got to try out ESTEC’s “blue room”.
This unique room is an excellent place to try receiving delicate radio signals – the
blue spikes that make up the room do an excellent job of cancelling out all other sounds and
stray signals.
RIME’s 16m antenna was scaled down for these tests to about 80cm, to better take advantage
of the facilities by using a more optimal frequency.
The tests went well, and within a few months JUICE was on the road again.
This time, it was headed for Toulouse, France.
It was drawing closer to its eventual launch site, but it had one more stop to make along
the way.
What probe would be complete without its solar panels?
Made up of 2356 solar cells each, the panels of JUICE would also fold up before launch,
only extending once the probe was safely up in space.
JUICE was receiving 10 panels in total, 5 on each side.
And unlike the other components, which would be hidden inside protective shielding, these
panels would have to endure the heat and radiation of space on their own.
They had to be manoeuvrable, as too much energy could cause the internal workings of JUICE
to overheat. Power would be regulated carefully.
All of this had to be done under the most careful of conditions.
Clean-rooms were used all along this process, to reduce the risk of dust and bacteria getting
onto the equipment.
JUICE was a little behind schedule, so had to be flown into Toulouse – representing
one of the first times this had happened.
This last stage of integration and testing was evidently not easy, as it was not until
January 2023 – a year and a half later, that JUICE was finally ready.
The rest of the story, you may already know.
JUICE was taken to French Guiana, and on the 14th of April, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket,
was launched into space.
It will now spend the next 8 years travelling through space, performing 3 gravity assists
around the Earth, and 1 around Venus.
Finally, in 2031, it will arrive at the Jovian system, and it will begin its careful evaluation
of the icy moons there; the awe-inspiring Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
In time, and assuming that nothing goes wrong, the data and answers it will provide may give
us insight into whether life could exist under those frozen surfaces.
And eventually, in 2035, its mission will come to an end, and it will crash into Ganymede
- it’s mission hopefully a resounding success.
But it’s important to recognise just how much of its journey has already taken place
before it could leave the planet.
JUICE represents a huge engineering feat, involving hundreds of people.
And while we await with eager excitement the results of this work, it’s important to
recognise and celebrate the expertise that allowed it to come into being in the first
place.
If JUICE ultimately finds the answers scientists hope for around Jupiter, it will only be because
of the great endeavour that took place here on Earth.
Among the many memorable moments in JUICE’s journey on Earth, one that caught my attention
was its time in the Blue Room.
The spikey foam on the walls there were highly effective at blocking stray signals, allowing
JUICE to complete its work unimpeded.
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