Juice exits ‘clean room on wheels’
After being fuelled for launch in the hazardous processing facility, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) was put into a ‘clean room on wheels’ that was used to transfer the spacecraft to the final assembly building.
Here we see Juice exiting the mobile clean room, gently manoeuvred by a team of engineers and technicians.
The operators wore bright yellow suits for this operation; these are used whenever hazardous operations are carried out, for example when a spacecraft is moved.
In the final assembly building Juice was attached to the Ariane 5 rocket that will carry it into space.
Juice is being prepared to launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on 13 April 2023. After an eight-year journey to Jupiter, the mission will make detailed observations of the gas giant and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of instruments. The mission will characterise these moons as both planetary objects and possible habitats, explore Jupiter’s complex environment in depth, and study the wider Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants across the Universe.
