Uplink 52: Journey to Jupiter’s Icy Moons
Join us on Thursday 1st July for Uplink episode 52 when we’ll be joined by Planetary Scientist Michele Doughty and ESA Project Scientist Olivier Witasse to explore ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission. We’ll be live at 8pm BST / 9pm CEST / 3pm EDT and set yourself a reminder here (and don’t forget to subscribe).
JUICE – JUpiter ICy moons Explorer – is the first large-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015–2025 programme. Currently undergoing environmental testing at ESA’s ESTEC, JUICE is planned for launch in May 2022 and due to arrive at Jupiter in October 2029 after a complex sequence of planetary fly-bys in the inner solar system. After arrival, it will spend at least three years making detailed observations of the giant gaseous planet Jupiter and three of its largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, all thought to harbour deep liquid water oceans under their icy crusts. In the final phase of the mission, it will enter orbit around Ganymede, the first spacecraft to orbit one of the moons of a giant planet.
Olivier Witasse has worked at ESA’s ESTEC centre in the Netherlands since 2000. He has been involved as the Project Scientist or Deputy Project Scientist for various missions, including Huygens, Venus Express, Chandrayaan-1, Mars Express, and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. He is currently Project Scientist for JUICE, the European mission to Jupiter and its icy moons. In these roles, he is responsible for the scientific aspects of these missions and their interface to the scientific community, and as a planetary scientist, Olivier carries out research in the field of planetary space weather.
Michele Dougherty is Professor of Space Physics at Imperial College London. She is closely involved in robotic exploratory missions to Saturn and Jupiter, as the Principal Investigator for the magnetometer instrument onboard the NASA-ESA-ASI Cassini mission to Saturn, and the Principal Investigator for the magnetometer for the ESA JUICE mission. She is Head of the Physics Department, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Geophysics Gold medal in 2017, a CBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List, and the Institute of Physics Richard Glazebrook Gold Medal and Prize.
Join us on Thursday at 8pm BST / 9pm CEST / 3pm EDT to watch and join in at our Youtube channel. You can also catch past episodes of Uplink and subscribe for news about forthcoming editions. Don’t forget you can also sign up to our new weekly newsletter MISSION UPDATE right here!
Pic credit
Michele Dougherty by Thomas Angus
