How to See a Spacecraft Slingshot Around Earth on Monday Night

The European Space Agency says it is intimately watching and adjusting the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) arsenic it attempts to whip the spacecraft astir the satellite and the Earth arsenic portion of a multipart travel towards the largest satellite successful our star system.

JUICE volition execute the risky maneuver betwixt August 19 and 20; the trade volition beryllium closest to the Earth astatine astir 12:00 a.m. ET (UTC +02:00) connected August 20.

The ESA said successful a connection that the craft’s intended acrobatics — a lunar-Earth flyby and a treble gravity assistance maneuver — volition magnitude to a “double satellite first.” The gravity assistance volition change the probe vehicle’s velocity and direction, but getting it close volition beryllium tricky, the bureau explained. Even the tiniest mistake “could instrumentality JUICE disconnected people and spell the extremity of the mission,” the ESA wrote.

A diagram of JUICE’s  lunar-Earth flyby © European Space Agency

JUICE kicked disconnected its travel with a launch successful April 2023 and a trajectory accommodation 7 months later. As it navigates past Earth and performs tests of onboard instruments, the trade volition harness the planet’s gravity to dilatory down and “bend” towards Venus, looping astir the satellite successful August 2025 earlier heading backmost towards Earth. (The slowdown is indispensable successful bid to bounds the magnitude of substance needed to easiness JUICE into orbit astir different planets).

Then, the trade volition execute 2 much loops astir Earth (one successful September 2026 and different January 2029) successful bid to scope the close way and velocity to participate Jupiter’s orbit successful 2031. From there, JUICE volition observe the 5th satellite from the prima and its icy moons.

JUICE’s multipart travel to Jupiter © European Space Agency

Ignacio Tanco, JUICE’s spacecraft operations manager, said the lunar-Earth flyby volition beryllium similar “passing done a precise constrictive corridor, very, precise quickly: pushing the accelerator to the maximum erstwhile the borderline astatine the broadside of the roadworthy is conscionable millimetres.”

Only the astir fortunate JUICE heads volition beryllium capable to spot the trade utilizing a scope oregon high-powered binoculars, the ESA said, erstwhile it flies “directly implicit Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean.” The bureau shared the craft’s trajectory information here. An easier mode to travel along, however, volition beryllium to show the ESA’s blog oregon X (formerly Twitter) account, which is wherever the bureau plans to station photos taken by JUICE’s two monitoring cameras during the flyby connected Monday nighttime and aboriginal Tuesday morning.

Venus and Jupiter aren’t the lone planets nether ticker by the ESA’s spacecraft. The agency’s Mars Express Orbiter precocious returned stunning images of the reddish planet’s “snaking scar.” As for the ESA’s U.S. counterpart, NASA is looking for private-sector assistance to get its abandoned rover to the moon. NASA has besides sought assistance from backstage abstraction companies arsenic it plots the destruction of the one-million-pound International Space Station, aft it retires the presumption astatine the extremity of 2030.