The ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft being unpacked at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana
© Alamy / Getty / ESA-CNES-Arianespace;Optique video du CSG;S. Martin
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) has arrived at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana for final preparations for launch. JUICE departed from Airbus facilities in Toulouse, France, on 9 February and has been unpacked at Kourou. The spacecraft will go through final checks and fuelling ahead of launch on an Ariane 5 rocket. The mission is scheduled to lift off on 13 April, when it will embark on an eight-year voyage to Jupiter to observe its icy moons Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. The spacecraft carries ten science payloads and will make 35 flybys of the moons, studying their magnetic fields and looking for clues about the conditions in their subsurface oceans and if these could potentially support life.