As these particles bombard the instruments on board, they cause damage over time this degrades the coatings on different instruments or the structures supporting them until they eventually break. These instruments will have to operate in a very high radiation environment, one of the most intense in the Solar System due to Jupiter’s magnetic field. Juice will make detailed observations of the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. Here we discuss the challenges Juice faces and some of the many TDE and GSTP activities that have helped overcome them. Many new technologies have been developed to overcome these engineering challenges and most of these began life within ESA’s technology programmes, as GSTP or TDE activities. Even simply the low light levels experienced when you are that far from the Sun. Whether that’s extreme radiation damaging equipment on board or the ice coverings preventing instrument measurements. During its lifetime the spacecraft and all the instruments on board will experience a wealth of challenges that most spacecraft, especially the satellites launched into Earth’s orbit, never experience. ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, ( Juice), which launches today, will spend 3½ years exploring the Jupiter system with a particular emphasis on visiting the three icy Galilean moons and collecting data on the Jovian atmosphere and magnetosphere. For any space mission to launch, thousands of hours must have been spent iterating new technologies to make the spacecraft fly.
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