Jupit
Jupiter, mission

Juice

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, planned to become the first spacecraft to orbit a moon in the outer solar system.

Launched
14 April 2023
Latest flyby
Earth, 28 September 2026
Arrives at Jupiter (planned)
July 2031
Mass at launch
about 6,000 kg

Where Juice is at the site clock’s time

Wind my clock at the bottom of the page and this follows.

13 au acrossDrag the map sideways, or press the arrow keys on it, to move timeOrbits and distances are to scale. I draw the Sun, planets and spacecraft larger than life until you zoom in. One au is the distance from Earth to the Sun, about 150 million km.
Path data
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The spacecraft

I can’t show you a model of Juice here: ESA’s terms for its official model do not clearly allow a modified copy on another site. Turn it round in ESA’s own 3D viewer

What we know

What it is for

Juice will study Jupiter and its three large moons thought to hold oceans: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. ESA sums up the theme as the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants. Ganymede is the main target.

The plan is 35 flybys of the moons, among them two of Europa in July 2032 and 21 of Callisto, and then an orbit around Ganymede from late 2034. ESA expects to end the mission by letting the spacecraft hit Ganymede in 2035. A more detailed trajectory table from ESA’s science team counts the encounters a little differently; I use the figures from ESA’s public pages.

The route so far

Juice cannot fly straight to Jupiter, so it borrows speed from planets. It does not give it back. It passed the Moon and Earth in August 2024, Venus in August 2025, and Earth again on 28 September 2026, when it flew 8,640 km above the Indian Ocean at 11:45 UTC. That pass turned its path by 20 degrees and added 3.5 km a second. One more Earth flyby is planned for January 2029.

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