The European space probe Juice has completed the world's first flyby of the Moon near Earth.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – also known as Juice – used Earth’s gravity to hurl itself toward Venus.
The route offers a shortcut to Jupiter through the inner solar system.
Juice reached its closest approach to the Moon on August 19 at 23:15 CEST. The next day, gravitational forces guided the spacecraft toward its closest approach to Earth at 23:56 CEST.
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The maneuver was carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA). By exploiting the gravity of the moon and the earth, ESA was able to change the speed and direction of the space probe.
ESA has released this image of the Moon taken by Juice. Image credit: ESA
As it flew past the moon, Juice initially accelerated by 0.9 km/s relative to the sun. As it flew past the earth, this speed then decreased by 4.8 km/s.
During the entire flyby, Juice was deflected by an angle of 100° compared to its previous trajectory.
“The gravity-assist flyby went smoothly, everything went smoothly and we were thrilled to see Juice return so close to Earth,” said Ignacio Tanco, the mission's spacecraft operations manager.
Juice is now on track to reach Venus in August 2025. A flyby of Venus will then take the spacecraft past Earth before two more forays to Jupiter, where it is scheduled to arrive in July 2031.
Juice will then study three of Jupiter's 92 known moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
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