Juice’s longest antenna awaits deployment
Shortly after launch on 14 April, ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, captured this image with its Juice monitoring camera 2 (JMC2).
JMC2 is located on the top* of the spacecraft and is placed to monitor the multi-stage deployment of the 16 m-long Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna. RIME is an ice-penetrating radar that will be used to remotely probe the subsurface structure of the large moons of Jupiter.
In this image, RIME is seen in stowed configuration. It will be deployed in stages over the coming days.
The image was taken at 14:19 CEST. JMC images provide 1024 x 1024 pixel snapshots. The images shown here are lightly processed with a preliminary colour adjustment.
*Additional technical information: "top" means +Z side of the spacecraft and the centre of the field of view of JMC2 lies roughly in the XY plane. The -Z side of the spacecraft is attached to the launcher, which rotates around the Z axis during the ascent phase.
