2023-04-28 10:33:00
The first data from J-MAG
(Bild: ESA/Juice/J-MAG Consortium)
Two weeks after the successful launch of the European Jupiter probe Juice, the “Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer” sent the first measurement data to Earth. As the European Space Agency ESA explains, the Magnetometer for JUICE (J-MAG) was activated on April 21 when the probe was about 1.7 million kilometers from Earth. The graph of the transmitted data shows how the instrument itself measured the extension of the antenna. It measures the strength of the magnetic field with two sensors placed about 3 meters apart. As they are removed from the rather magnetic thrusters, the measured magnetic field strengths decrease and converge. The data suggest sothat everything worked out.
Years of journey started
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer was launched on April 14 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou Cosmodrome in French Guiana. The space probe is now more than 3.3 million kilometers from Earth and is still busy extending all antennas and activating sensors and instruments. The ESA explains that this will take months. In 2031, she should reach the Jupiter system and, with the ten instruments on board, devote herself in particular to the three moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. They may offer favorable conditions for the emergence of life. Together with Io, they form the four Galilean moons discovered by the Italian explorer Galileo Galilei in 1610.
(Bild: ESA/Juice/JMC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
The probe also has several cameras on board, including two in the main body, which are intended to be used to track the slow build-up. So that was several hours after takeoff “Selfies” of the probe in front of the earth succeded. Another camera for higher resolution images is not yet in operation and will take pictures of Jupiter and its icy moons later in the mission. The entire mission is monitored in the ESA control center in Darmstadt, Germany financed about a fifth of it.
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