Mission control: flying Juice on a journey of firsts

It will take eight years and three planetary flybys for Juice to get into orbit around Jupiter. Once there, it will perform 35 flybys of the gas giant’s largest icy moons, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, before changing orbits to Ganymede, the largest and most massive of the three. Juice will be the first spacecraft ever to change orbits from another planet to one of its moons. Over the course of the mission, teams at ESA’s mission control centre will perform back-to-back critical operations for this mission like no other they’ve flown before. It will be an exciting ride!