ESA's JUICE spacecraft flies by Venus on its way to Jupiter's icy moons
During the wee hours of this morning (Aug. 31), a boxy spacecraft with solar wings in the shape of crosses flew right by Venus — if all went according to plan.
Unfortunately for the public, JUICE operators had to turn off the spacecraft's sensors during the probe's Venus flyby because of the intense heat of the amber-hued planet's environment. What does that mean? No images.
The next stop for the nearly 13,300-pound (6,000-kilogram) probe will be Earth yet again.
"JUICE will use the gravity of Venus this week to bend its orbit around the sun and gain speed relative to Earth without using fuel," ESA wrote in the Aug. 25 statement. "JUICE will use the Earth flyby in 2026 to further fine-tune its trajectory."
From there, the probe will conduct one more orbit around the sun, the team explained, before returning to (you guessed it) Earth a final time in January 2029. Only then can it start thinking about the culmination of its journey. It should settle in orbit around Jupiter in July 2031.
JUICE will study our solar system's creamsicle-colored gas giant, but also to gather data about three of the planet's largest moons — Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. These three moons are believed to harbor oceans under their icy crusts, meaning they could be solid leads in astronomers' quest to find life beyond Earth.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/...-icy-moons
During the wee hours of this morning (Aug. 31), a boxy spacecraft with solar wings in the shape of crosses flew right by Venus — if all went according to plan.
Unfortunately for the public, JUICE operators had to turn off the spacecraft's sensors during the probe's Venus flyby because of the intense heat of the amber-hued planet's environment. What does that mean? No images.
The next stop for the nearly 13,300-pound (6,000-kilogram) probe will be Earth yet again.
"JUICE will use the gravity of Venus this week to bend its orbit around the sun and gain speed relative to Earth without using fuel," ESA wrote in the Aug. 25 statement. "JUICE will use the Earth flyby in 2026 to further fine-tune its trajectory."
From there, the probe will conduct one more orbit around the sun, the team explained, before returning to (you guessed it) Earth a final time in January 2029. Only then can it start thinking about the culmination of its journey. It should settle in orbit around Jupiter in July 2031.
JUICE will study our solar system's creamsicle-colored gas giant, but also to gather data about three of the planet's largest moons — Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. These three moons are believed to harbor oceans under their icy crusts, meaning they could be solid leads in astronomers' quest to find life beyond Earth.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/...-icy-moons
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
