Europe's Ambitious "Juice" Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons Set to Launch

The European Space Agency's Juice mission will launch on April 13 to study three of Jupiter's moons, Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede, which could offer clues in the search for extraterrestrial life. The spacecraft will take more than eight years to reach Jupiter, with a series of gravitational assists past Venus, Mars, and Earth. Juice will perform 35 flybys of the moons, searching for magnetic signals and other evidence to confirm the presence and size of oceans sloshing under their surfaces. The mission's primary objective is the study of Ganymede, the first spacecraft to orbit a moon in the outer solar system.