Interstellar Life: European Space Agency to launch spacecraft to Jupiter’s moons in search of life

As a civilization, humans have been asking whether life exists beyond the Earth for centuries. With the advent of space travel, this question has only picked up steam. That’s why, even today, one of the key aspects of most space missions is to look for signs of life. If extraterrestrial life exists in our solar system, experts believe it will most likely be found on Mars or one of Saturn’s or Jupiter’s ice moons. That is why there is so much enthusiasm about a new spacecraft that will leave Earth this week on an eight-year voyage to the biggest planet in our solar system. The JUICE mission Once it reaches Jupiter, JUICE or the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, one of Europe’s most ambitious space missions to date, the satellite will do a series of flybys of Jupiter and its three giant ocean-bearing moons, Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa.   The six-tonne spacecraft will employ an upgraded set of equipment to examine the gas giant and determine if any of the satellites that circle it are livable as it travels closer to these worlds than ever before. **Also read: The Moon 'ghosting' the Earth: Is the moon really creeping away from the Earth at an alarming rate?** JUICE will launch from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Thursday (April 13) at 13:15 BST, riding on an Ariane 5 rocket similar to the one that sent the James Webb Space Telescope into orbit in December 2021.   It will then travel 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion km) to the Jovian system during an eight-and-a-half-year period, arriving at Jupiter in July 2031. The JUpiter ICy lunar Explorer spacecraft will do 35 flybys of Jupiter’s three moons before entering a permanent orbit around Ganymede in late 2034. It can operate on half the power of a hairdryer and has a ’nuclear bunker’ to protect its electronics from radiation. One of the ten tools JUICE  contains was developed by British scientists, and the UK Space Agency also contributed £9 million to the £1.4 billion spacecraft’s construction.   A risky mission According to Dr Caroline Harper, head of space science at the UK Space Agency, “JUICE will take us to a portion of the solar system that we know very little about, to study Jupiter, our largest planet, and to discover if any of its frozen moons are home to conditions that potentially sustain life.” Europa may be the most probable of Jupiter’s moons to harbour alien life, but JUICE will only get a fleeting sight of it. This is due to the hostile atmosphere around the moon. NASA claims that it may destroy a spacecraft in a matter of months at most. In fact, simply getting to Jupiter is difficult. The closer you go to the gas giant and the longer you desire to stay near it, the more difficult it becomes.   **Also read: What are the enormous 'universe breaker' galaxies discovered by NASA's James Webb telescope?** Jupiter is five times further away from the sun than Earth, therefore it only receives 4 per cent of the sunlight that our planet does. Although JUICE is not geared to look for indications of life, its goal is to investigate the circumstances that potentially sustain life.   Part of the reason for this is that underneath Europa’s ice crust is expected to lay a vast ocean of liquid water, holding twice as much water as all of Earth’s seas combined, which is heated by tidal forces. This is thought to generate an interior circulation system that keeps water circulating and regularly refreshes the frozen surface. Such a notion is crucial because it implies that scientists would not have to travel far into the subsurface ocean to locate evidence of life, as the fact that the ocean floor interacts with the top implies that clues may be found there. Jupiter’s largest moon has the best chance to host life “Of the Galilean satellites, Europa is the most probable to have alien life since the ocean is likely in touch with sand/rock,” said Professor Coates. Scientists, however, are more interested in Ganymede for the aims of the JUICE mission.   Jupiter’s biggest moon is expected to contain a salty ocean beneath its icy shell, and one of JUICE’s primary objectives is to study this body of water in order to establish whether this planet is livable. **Also read: China now has their own space station, successfully dock the final module of the Tiangong space station** The spacecraft was designed to resist strong radiation and high temperatures ranging from 250 degrees Celsius at Venus to -230 degrees Celsius near Jupiter. Sensitive electronics are safeguarded inside a pair of lead-lined vaults within the probe’s body, which includes ten instruments for data collection. J-MAG, a magnetometer developed by Imperial College London experts, will measure the features of Jupiter’s and Ganymede’s magnetic fields. Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.