Juice Spacecraft's RIME Antenna Successfully Deployed
The Juice spacecraft's RIME antenna, designed to study Jupiter's icy moons, has been successfully deployed after overcoming a stuck pin issue with the help of a mechanical device called a 'non-explosive actuator'. The 16-meter-long boom had been stuck for over three weeks, but the flight control team at ESA's mission control center in Darmstadt finally managed to jolt it into life on May 12. Once ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) arrives at Jupiter, it will use RIME to study the surface and subsurface structure of Jupiter's icy moons down to a depth of 9 km.