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.
A cosmic alignment and a little bit of spacecraft gymnastics has provided a ground-breaking measurement that is helping solve the 65-year-old cosmic mystery of why the Sun’s atmosphere is so hot.
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
Solar Orbiter has made the first ever remote sensing observation of a magnetic phenomenon called a solar ‘switchback’, proving their origin in the solar surface and pointing to a mechanism that might help accelerate the solar wind.
The ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft is speeding towards its historic first close pass of the Sun. On 14 March, the spacecraft will pass the orbit of Mercury, the scorched inner planet of our Solar System, and on 26 March it will reach closest approach to the Sun.