Since our ancient ancestors looked up at the skies and saw the brilliant white dot that is Jupiter, we have come a long way in understanding this enormous ball of gas and its menagerie of moons. We have used rudimentary telescopes, high-tech modern telescopes, and space telescopes, the first probes have even passed by for an initial look, but we have never sent a spacecraft to explore the moons close up. ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, is here to change the game.

Juice will make detailed observations of the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of instruments. By making flybys of these moons at distances of just a few hundred kilometres, and even going into orbit around Ganymede, Juice will characterise them as both planetary objects and possible habitats. The mission will also explore Jupiter’s complex environment in depth, and study the wider Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants across the Universe.

Shown in this video is Jupiter and its giant moon Ganymede – Juice’s primary target, the largest moon in the Solar System, and the only one to generate its own magnetic field.

After arrival in the Jovian system in 2031, Juice will perform five Ganymede flybys to reduce its orbital energy so that it can effectively explore Jupiter; whilst in this ‘Jupiter orbit’ phase of the mission, it will make further flybys to carry out scientific observations, before later transferring from orbit around Jupiter to orbit around Ganymede, becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit a moon other than our own, and beginning its investigations of the moon in earnest in late 2034. Juice will end its mission by colliding with Ganymede’s surface in 2035.

Discover more about Juice and Jupiter’s icy moons.