What is ESA JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer)?

Space probes are uncrewed robotic spacecraft sent beyond Earth orbit to explore other worlds and send scientific data back to Earth. Liquid water is one of the key prerequisites for life as we know it, but with current astronomical methods liquid water is harder to detect than vapor or ice, especially below a surface. Juice, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, is a European Space Agency probe launched in April 2023 to study Jupiter and its icy moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, which are thought to have liquid water beneath their frozen surfaces. It is due to arrive at Jupiter in July 2031. Its radar can penetrate the icy surfaces as deep as nine kilometers, and its magnetometer can sense the changes an ocean would cause in a magnetic field.

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