On 28 September, ESA’s Juice mission reached another important Jupiter-bound milestone with its penultimate gravity assist manoeuvre: a flyby of Earth. This encounter, however, was not only an essential step on the road to Jupiter, but an opportunity to rehearse the observations and operations that will define Juice’s exploration of the Jovian system.
After a major upgrade and calibration phase, the ASTRI-Horn prototype on Mount Etna has proven to be a highly successful instrument. In addition to the scientific results achieved, the telescope has confirmed the validity of the technologies employed, which are also used by the ASTRI Mini-Array and the SST telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO). It will soon be used as a testbed for the study of volcanoes through Cherenkov muon observations.
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) has successfully completed a world-first lunar-Earth flyby, using the gravity of Earth to send it Venus-bound, on a shortcut to Jupiter through the inner Solar System.
The instrument Jovis, Amorum ac Natorum Undique Scrutator (JANUS) passed the commissioning phase with full marks. It is a real test during which – 8 million km from the Earth – it opened its electronic “eyes”, sending the so-called “first light”, i.e. his first series of images, to the technicians and researchers