JUICE, ESA's L-class mission to the Jovian system Options

[bobik]

Taking into account ESA's dumb way to communicate JUICE's launch delay to 2023 and that so far no new official launch date and trajectory has been published, I am wondering if ESA's PR people are trying to tease us with this sort of tweet

[bobik]

Unbelievable! Finally, someone with a Twitter account has got the cojones to ask ESA about the JUICE launch date and has even got a more or less useful reply: "...stay tuned!"

[bobik]

A new JUICE baseline trajectory (CReMA 5.0b23.1) is published - launch on 5 April 2023. Earlier, August 2023 was mentioned as back-up launch date. By the way, is there an easy and convenient way to read or visualize Orbit kernels?

[mcaplinger]

By the way, is there an easy and convenient way to read or visualize Orbit kernels?

You can use SPICE-enhanced Cosmographia https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/cosmographia.html but I would call that neither easy nor convenient. There's a steep learning curve, especially with setting up the JSON files.

[volcanopele]

At least for ESA Missions there are official Cosmographia add-ons that make adding them pretty simple:

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/spice/cosmographia

[Brian Swift]

.. By the way, is there an easy and convenient way to read or visualize Orbit kernels?

A relatively easy way to produce plots and tables is the ESA WebGeocalc web page.
.
The above plot of distance to Jupiter was produced by first selecting "juice_crema_5_0b23_1" kernel set from the pulldown,
and entering the below settings in the GUI.

CODE

Target type    Object
Target    JUPITER
Observer type    Object
Observer    JUICE
Reference frame    IAU_JUPITER
Light propagation    No correction
Time system    UTC
Time format    Calendar date and time
Time range    2023-05-01 to 2031-08-01
Step    200 equal intervals
State representation    Rectangular

Note: The IAU_JUPITER (rotating) Reference Frame isn't isn't a good choice for plotting positions. Using JUPITER_SUN_ORB
(of which I haven't looked up the definition) for the Reference Frame, and plotting the X,Y positions (from downloaded CSV table)
looks like:

[vjkane]

At least for ESA Missions there are official Cosmographia add-ons that make adding them pretty simple:

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/spice/cosmographia

For those who can read this data, when does the spacecraft arrive at Jupiter? Thanks.

[vjkane]

At least for ESA Missions there are official Cosmographia add-ons that make adding them pretty simple:

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/spice/cosmographia

For those who can read this data, when does the spacecraft arrive at Jupiter? Thanks.

[bobik]

Many thanks! Cosmographia gave me an error message when I tried (not very hard) to load the JSON file, however WebGeocalc works fine for me, with the help of the above example.

If I made no mistake,

Launch: 2023-04-05

Moon : 2024-08-19
Earth : 2024-08-20
Venus : 2025-08-31
Earth : 2026-09-28
Earth : 2029-01-17

JOI : 2031-07-21 (a year earlier than with the August 2023 launch trajectory)

[StargazeInWonder]

It's remarkable – almost comical – that after a quarter century, two missions are going to arrive for overlapping jovian system science at almost the same time. Now it looks like Europa Clipper will make a close pass of Europa before JUICE does but it's like watching a close horse race. And won't really matter; it'll be great to get the complementary science as both make observations with similar but non-identical instruments.

Interestingly, both missions' radar instruments have a mode at 9 MHz, which might make them a little less complementary than redundant in kind. Still, 46 radar tracks is better than 44.

[stevesliva]

Would be nice if the continuing presence continued more places than LEO. At a minimum Mars and Jupiter. But one can easily dream of the rest.

[StargazeInWonder]

The inner jovian system has radiation to prohibit long lifetimes and the outer jovian system would exclude the targets of highest interest.

Future telescopes are going to have amazing resolution of Jupiter from Earth, so monitoring Jupiter from the vicinity of Callisto or farther wouldn't add much value, either.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Future telescopes are going to have amazing resolution of Jupiter from Earth, so monitoring Jupiter from the vicinity of Callisto or farther wouldn't add much value, either.

It's correct that future telescopes will have amazing resolution. However they will be busy observing many different targets and can observe Jupiter only occasionally (this is also true today for the largest groundbased telescopes). So observations by amateur astronomers (or a spacecraft imaging Jupiter from Callisto's orbit or farther out) are still going to be highly valuable because of their time resolution.

And this is an updated ESA animation showing the JUICE trajectory and the dates of several major mission events:
https://youtu.be/Fw17N3rdN7s

[bobik]

And this is an updated ESA animation showing the JUICE trajectory and the dates of several major mission events:
https://youtu.be/Fw17N3rdN7s

I don't get it, as early as 9 March, ESA has posted a bunch of videos about JUICE's new trajectory on Youtube exclusively (what is questionable) without any press release or slightest hint about it on it's official websites or even JUICE's twitter account, what seems to be presently it's main outreach channel (what is even more questionable). It's certain that ESA's PR - or better said, it's information policy is badly flawed.

[bobik]

Finally the latest (much-anticipated) The Making of JUICE episode has been released.