Juice: ESA’s Jupiter mission completes third gravity assist

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INNOVATION Juice: ESA’s Jupiter mission completes third gravity assist by Suhasini Srinivasaragavan 2 Oct 2026 Save article Juice captures Earth during its flyby on 28 September, 2026. 400 years after Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei first wrote about them in his book ‘Siderius Nuncius’ (or The Starry Messenger), scientists are betting on a new spacecraft to find out if Jupiter’s largest moons could sustain life. The European Space Agency is a research and development company based in Paris.

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or the Juice spacecraft for short, is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission that will journey to the gas giant and three of its icy moons – Ganymede, Europa and Callisto – to look for ingredients necessary for life, including liquid water and potential energy sources. She is part of a 2,000-people team supporting the ESA mission from Ireland. The massive project involves 18 research institutes and 83 companies from across 23 countries, including research instruments and hardware provided by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).