Juice images Earth during Earth flyby
During its flyby of Earth on 28 September 2026, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) captured this stunning view of Earth.
The image was taken by Juice monitoring camera 1 (JMC1) just at 13:58 CEST, as Juice was heading away from its closest approach to Earth. This successful flyby of Earth redirected Juice’s path through space to put it on course for another flyby of Earth in 2029.
In the image, we see much of the continent of Africa. To the left of the main continent is the island of Madagascar. We can just about see Yemen and Oman above the Gulf of Aden.
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. JMC images provide 1024 x 1024 pixel snapshots. The images shown here are lightly processed by Simeon Schmauß.
Guide to Juice’s monitoring cameras
More images from Juice's monitoring cameras in ESA's Planetary Science Archive
*Additional technical information: ‘front’ means +X side of the spacecraft (the opposite side, -X hosts the high gain antenna). JMC1 looks towards the +Y/+Z direction.
Processing notes: In each case, two images of different exposures have been added to increase the details in the shadows.
The Juice monitoring cameras were developed by Switzerland-based company Micro-Cameras & Space Exploration.
[Image description: Mostly black space, most of Earth visible at the top right of the image. Part of a spacecraft visible on the left.]
