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Mission record

Juice

Also known as Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer

ESA, NASA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Israel Space Agency · Launched

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ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, launched on 14 April 2023 on an Ariane 5 from Kourou and still in interplanetary cruise. Its targets are Jupiter and the ocean-bearing Galilean moons Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, due to be reached in July 2031. It has flown what ESA calls a world-first lunar-Earth gravity assist on 19-20 August 2024, passing the Moon and then Earth a day apart, and a Venus gravity assist on 31 August 2025; two further Earth gravity assists, planned for 2026 and 2029, have not happened.

Destinations
Launch vehicle
Ariane 5
Launch site
Kourou, French Guiana
Countries
Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States
Mission types
Orbiter, Flyby

Chronology

Mission timeline

  1. Launch

    Launch on an Ariane 5 from Kourou

    Juice launched from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on an Ariane 5 launcher on 14 April 2023. ESA reports liftoff at 14:14 CEST (12:14 UTC).

    Earth

  2. Flyby

    Moon flyby, the first half of the lunar-Earth gravity assist

    The first of the two passes in what ESA calls a world-first lunar-Earth flyby. ESA/ESOC's flight dynamics team publishes the reconstructed closest approach as 19/08/2024 at 21:14:54.681 UTC with a 3-sigma uncertainty of 0.001 sec, at a closest approach distance of 2 489.519 km, which the same sentence gives as 752 km from the Moon surface. ESA's own account of the flyby puts the instant at 23:15 CEST (21:15 UTC) on 19 August and says the pass increased Juice's speed by 0.9 km/s relative to the Sun. The timestamp recorded here is the published instant at the whole-second precision this catalog stores.

    Moon

  3. Gravity assist

    Earth gravity assist, the second half of the lunar-Earth gravity assist

    Just over 24 hours after the Moon. ESA/ESOC publishes the reconstructed closest approach as 20/08/2024 at 21:56:13.637 UTC at a closest approach distance of 13 210.572 km, which the same sentence gives as 6839 km from the Earth surface; ESA's account of the flyby says Juice flew just 6840 km above Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean. The pass reduced Juice's speed by 4.8 km/s relative to the Sun and sent it towards Venus, and ESA gives the deflection of the double flyby as 100 degrees.

    Earth

  4. Gravity assist

    Venus gravity assist

    The second of four planned gravity assists. ESA gave the closest approach as 07:28 CEST on Sunday, 31 August, and recorded afterwards, in an update dated 1 September 2025, that the flyby was a success. No closest-approach distance for Venus appears in any source fetched for this record, so none is stored.

    Venus

  5. Milestone

    Observes interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS from cruise

    In November 2025 Juice was, in ESA's words, in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment to observe interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS just after its closest approach to the Sun, and five of its science instruments were switched on to do it. No celestial-body ID exists in this atlas for 3I/ATLAS, so no bodyId is recorded.

Mission architecture

Vehicles

  • Juice spacecraft · Orbiter · In interplanetary cruise. Three-axis stabilised with 10 solar panels and a 2.5-metre-long High Gain Antenna, with a dry mass of approximately 2400 kg and a wet mass (including fuel) of approximately 6000 kg; built by an industrial consortium led by Airbus Defence and Space (Toulouse, France)

    Destinations: Moon, Earth, Venus, Jupiter, Ganymede, Europa, Callisto

Trajectory record

Time-dependent navigation trajectory

Source states place the model at the selected time. Reconstructed flight, estimates, predictions and historical mission plans are identified by interval; gaps remain visible.

J2000 · Sun-centered display · positions interpolated between source states

Coverage: April 14, 2023 to July 19, 2031

Source records and sampling assumptions are retained with the repository data. Model attitude and surface appearance are illustrative.

  • JUICE: Reconstructed · April 14, 2023 to July 19, 2031

Provenance

Sources

Each source is listed once and labeled with the mission, event, trajectory, or destination/body context it supports.

Data verified through September 1, 2026