ESA JUICE mission hits a snag on an important component

ESA announced Friday that the radar dish on its Jupiter Icey Moon Explorer (JUICE) mission isn’t deploying as fast as it should be. But have no fear. The mission isn’t in jeopardy yet, and teams have some ideas on how to fix it.

What’s wrong with the JUICE?

Luckily, JUICE is getting all the juice it needs… sorry I had to do it. The spacecraft is currently underway with its two-month commissioning phase and has deployed its solar panels. JUICE has even conducted some science already too!

JUICE’s radar dish, or the Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna, is 16 meters wide and is based on similar instruments on ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Unfortunately, the dish has only deployed about 1/3 of the amount it should have by now. ESA believes the slow deployment could be a stuck pin that has slowed its movement.

RIME’s slow deployment is the only issue ESA is tracking on JUICE, with the deployment of a large boom being successful and many more coming over the next two months. And while RIME is just one of many instruments on JUICE that will study Jupiter, it’s an exciting one to see what it discovers. RIME will be used to study what is below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moons. Most of which we believe to have subsurface water oceans, a possible starting point for life.

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Is there any way to fix RIME?

Luckily for ESA, RIME seems to be moving a bit more each day. So ESA is optimistic they can fully deploy the dish in the eight years it will take to get to Jupiter.

JUICE has several maneuvers planned in the coming weeks that ESA believes with free RIME. First, the spacecraft has a planned role which will expose the dish to direct sunlight, warming up the possible stuck pin and freeing it. Second, a planned engine burn could shake the dish enough to deploy it fully.

ESA says it will keep a close eye on RIME’s deployment, hoping it will continue its slow movements. JUICE is a flagship mission for ESA and will explore both Jupiter and some of its biggest moons in depth with first-of-its-kind data.

Like Perseverance, this mission is another chance to get one step forward to figuring out if we are alone in the universe, or if life is even possible elsewhere in our solar system.