The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully conducted a critical gravity maneuver near Earth for its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission.. On June 28, 2026, the spacecraft approached our planet, using gravity to change the trajectory and increase fluidity, which means saving money for the further journey to Jupiter.
Master of the Earth's gravity.
During the hour, which was at an altitude of 8640 km above the Indian Ocean, Juice recovered from its forward trajectory by 20 degrees and gained a speed of 3.5 km/s. The mission's operators planned this maneuver with extreme precision: just a few minutes before the spill, they needed just one insignificant cortical impulse to indicate the high level of planning and viconanne. The spacecraft also took a series of photographs of the Earth and the Month using its monitoring cameras, producing unique images from space.
" “The main thing is that we have lost a small part of the land reserved for this space,” says Angela Dietz, operations manager for the Juice spacecraft.. “This means that we will lose more resources to work around Jupiter and monitor its planetary companions.”.
Training for scientific instruments.
Besides the main point - correction of the trajectory, this flight became the third opportunity to protest the scientific instruments of Juice in the minds of the real cosmic environment. The first two tests were carried out under the hour of gravitational maneuver during the month of the 2024th birth and under the hour of watch for comet 3I/ATLAS in the 2025th birth. ESA teams from space operations, science operations and technology centers, together with external experts working on Juice's 10 scientific devices, carefully planned skin activation of the skin..
“Juice’s journey to Jupiter provides little opportunity for calibration and validation of the devices in the minds of well-trained spacefarers,” explains Claire Vallet, scientific director of the Juice project.. “Looking at the timing of operations, priority is given to the most important activities, such as calibration when Juice is in the shadow of the Earth, if you are running out of batteries. Calibration robots have often been prioritized due to the current importance of preparing instruments for the work of Jupiter, as well as the uniqueness of the product or its ability.
The flight will carry the Earth, although it is complex, but significantly simpler in comparison with the upcoming 35 maneuvers of the giant satellites of Jupiter - Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. Prote, such maneuvers themselves allow not only to adjust the tools, but also to develop methods for analyzing data, which is critically important for future, more complex tasks. During the hour of being in the magnetic tail of the Earth, Juice also tested the extinction of magnetic fields and charged particles, which will help better understand the connections between the activity in the distant magnetic field of the Earth and objects on.
The onset of contact with the Earth is planned for 2029, when Juice performs the third, final gravitational maneuver to enter the trajectory to Jupiter, which may be achieved in 2031. The Juice mission scrambled the Earth to accelerate to Jupiter: read the successful gravitational maneuver on the HiTech website. Expert.