Keeping Jupiter's icy moons pristine will be paramount in scientists' thinking when the time comes to end the European Space Agency's JUICE mission.
a couple of flybys of Europa, 21 flybys of fellow icy moon Callisto, and 12 close passes of Ganymede before settling into orbit around Ganymede in 2032. From this vantage point,"JUICE will be able to measure the thickness of the crust, because we will have very good coverage of the entirety of Ganymede," said Vallat.
Should there be a surprise — for example, perhaps JUICE will discover thinner parts of the crust, or some mechanism that is transporting material, perhaps convectively, between the ocean and the surface — then JUICE's planetary protection category could change. This would mean that JUICE could no longer be allowed to crash into Ganymede to end its mission.
"If we find out that Ganymede is actually category III, then we will have to look from a navigation point of view how to solve this," said Vallat."It would be fantastic from a science point of view, but scary at the same time because it could affect the end of the mission quite strongly." What that solution would be has yet to be determined, but it would not be an unwelcome headache for the JUICE team, since part of the mission's remit is to probe the potential habitability of Jupiter's icy moons and better understand the conditions that could render them habitable. While JUICE will not be able to observe the oceans directly, it will be able to characterize them.
"JUICE is the next step in understanding habitability," concluded Vallat."It will help answer so many questions that are important for humankind."
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