After weather experts warned of the potential for lightning strikes at the European Space Agency's spaceport in French Guiana, the JUICE spacecraft's scheduled launch on Thursday for an eight-year trip was postponed.
According to The Guardian, mission controllers on Thursday scrapped the launch about 10 minutes before the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, spacecraft was due to blast off on an eight-year voyage to survey a trio of Jovian moons where life may once have gained a foothold.
While Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede are frigid, ice-covered moons three-quarters of a billion kilometres from the sun, previous missions have found evidence for vast liquid water oceans beneath their surfaces, raising the tantalising prospect that living organisms might eke out an existence in the distant worlds.
Now, a 24-hour delay has been imposed on the Juice mission. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), a launch attempt will be made on Friday at 5:44 pm.
The spacecraft is wrapped in 500 layers of thermal insulation blankets to protect itself against temperatures expected to soar above 250 degrees Celsius (480 degrees Fahrenheit) as it flies past Venus, then plummet below minus 230 degrees near Jupiter.
It has a record 85 square metres of solar panels, which stretch out to the size of a basketball court, to collect as much energy as possible near Jupiter, where sunlight is 25 times weaker than on Earth.
Once the probe arrives at Jupiter in 2031, now with two billion kilometres on the odometer, it will need to very carefully hit the brakes to enter the orbit of the gas giant.
From there, JUICE will focus on Jupiter's system, including the gas giant and its three icy moons, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
What is the purpose of the mission?
According to the European Space Agency, Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or 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 remote sensing, geophysical, and in situ instruments. The mission will characterise these moons as both planetary objects and possible habitats, explore Jupiter's complex environment in depth, and study the wider Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants across the Universe.
