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Following the launch of ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (Juice) on 14 April 2023, the spacecraft had to ‘unfold’ itself in space. This included extending the 16-metre RIME antenna. RIME, short for Radar for Icy Moon Exploration, is an ice-penetrating radar instrument to study the subsurface structure of Jupiter’s icy moons down to a depth of around nine kilometres.
But RIME did not deploy as expected. The ESA and Airbus Juice teams worked hard to seek out the origin of the problem and solve it. A month later, on 12 May 2023, the antenna was successfully deployed.
In this technical presentation recorded on 20 June 2024, Ronan Le Letty (ESA) explains the complex problems around the RIME antenna deployment and how it was solved. Giuseppe Sarri, former Juice Project Manager at ESA shortly presents the context and David Monteiro, former Product Assurance Manager for Juice at ESA presents some final thoughts at the end of the presentation.
This talk is part of the ESA expert lectures with the support of ESA Knowledge Management.