Europe's Jupiter Probe: Earth & Moon Flyby Views | ESA

Europe's Jupiter Probe: Earth & Moon Flyby Views | ESA

Moon & Earth flyby: This image was taken by JUICE monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) just at 02:53 CEST on August 21, 2024, as JUICE was heading towards its closest approach to Earth.

Lunar flyby: This image was taken by JUICE monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) at 23:25 CEST on August 19, 2024, soon after JUICE made its closest approach to the Moon. This successful flyby of the Moon slightly redirected JUICE’s path through space to put it on course for a flyby of Earth on August 20, 2024.

The image shows some sign of real color differences in the large-scale features on the lunar surface.

Lunar flyby: This image was taken by JUICE monitoring camera 2 (JMC2) at 23:15 CEST on August 19, 2024, soon after JUICE made its closest approach to the Moon. This successful flyby of the Moon slightly redirected Juice’s path through space to put it on course for a flyby of Earth on August 20, 2024.

Earth flyby: This image was taken by JUICE monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) just at 00:09 CEST on August 21, 2024, as JUICE was heading towards its closest approach to Earth. This successful flyby of Earth redirected JUICE’s path through space to put it on course for a flyby of Venus in August 2025.

Earth flyby: This image was taken by JUICE monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) just at 23:48 CEST on August 20, 2024, as JUICE was heading towards its closest approach to Earth. This successful flyby of Earth redirected Juice’s path through space to put it on course for a flyby of Venus in August 2025.

This spacecraft ‘braking’ maneuver will take JUICE on a shortcut to Jupiter via Venus.

JUICE includes 10 dedicated scientific instruments, a radiation monitor (RADEM) and the Planetary Radio Interferometer & Doppler Experiment (PRIDE).

The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) returned to the Earth-Moon system on August 19–20, 2024, to complete the world's first Lunar-Earth gravity assist. Flight controllers will guide the spacecraft past the Moon and then Earth itself, ‘braking’ the spacecraft. This maneuver may seem counterintuitive but it will allow JUICE to take a shortcut via Venus on its way to Jupiter in August 2025.

JUICE has already traveled more than a billion km to the giant planet. However, it still has a long way to go although Jupiter is on average ‘just’ 800 million km away from Earth.

JUICE launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou in April 2023. It has an eight-year cruise with flybys of Earth and Venus to slingshot it to Jupiter. It will make 35 flybys of the three large moons while orbiting Jupiter, before changing orbits to Ganymede.

JUICE is a mission under European Space Agency leadership with contributions from NASA, JAXA and the Israel Space Agency. It is the first Large-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision program.

The JUICE monitoring cameras were designed to monitor the spacecraft’s various booms and antennas, especially during the challenging deployment period following launch.

They were not designed to carry out science or image the Moon and Earth. A scientific camera called JANUS is providing high-resolution imagery during the cruise phase flybys of Earth, Moon and Venus, and of Jupiter and its icy moons once in the Jupiter system in 2031.

JMC1 is located on the front of the spacecraft and looks diagonally up into a field of view that sees deployed antennas, and depending on their orientation, part of one of the solar arrays. 

Follow the JUICE Mission: www.esa.int/juice

Learn more:

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice/Juice_s_lunar-Earth_flyby_all_you_need_to_know

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/Juice_why_s_it_taking_sooo_long

Image Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/JUICE/JMC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Image Processing: Simeon Schmauß, Mark McCaughrean

Image Dates: Aug. 20-21, 2024

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