Radar antenna on Europe’s JUICE probe to Jupiter stuck
European Space Agency officials revealed yesterday that the 52-foot radar antenna on its JUICE probe to Jupiter has failed to deploy as planned, and that they are attempting to shake what they think is a small pin free that is in the way.
Engineers suspect a tiny pin may be protruding. Flight controllers in Germany plan to fire the spacecraft’s engine in hopes of shaking the pin loose. If that doesn’t work, they said they have plenty of time to solve the problem.
Juice, short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, won’t reach the giant planet until 2031. It’s taking a roundabout path to get there, including gravity-assist flybys of Earth and our moon, and Venus.
The radar antenna is needed to peer beneath the icy crust of three Jupiter moons suspected of harboring underground oceans and possibly life, a major goal of the nearly $1.8 billion mission. Its targets include Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.
If this antenna cannot be freed, it will prevent JUICE from doing one of its prime missions.
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European Space Agency officials revealed yesterday that the 52-foot radar antenna on its JUICE probe to Jupiter has failed to deploy as planned, and that they are attempting to shake what they think is a small pin free that is in the way.
Engineers suspect a tiny pin may be protruding. Flight controllers in Germany plan to fire the spacecraft’s engine in hopes of shaking the pin loose. If that doesn’t work, they said they have plenty of time to solve the problem.
Juice, short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, won’t reach the giant planet until 2031. It’s taking a roundabout path to get there, including gravity-assist flybys of Earth and our moon, and Venus.
The radar antenna is needed to peer beneath the icy crust of three Jupiter moons suspected of harboring underground oceans and possibly life, a major goal of the nearly $1.8 billion mission. Its targets include Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.
If this antenna cannot be freed, it will prevent JUICE from doing one of its prime missions.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
This is bad news indeed… ESA has a tiny budget compared to NASA, and this is a flagship mission, ( I believe it’s the first ESA mission to the outer planets.)
Keep fingers crossed and hold out thumbs they literally shake off this problem, there is so much great science we will lose if they can’t. :-(
They should think about designing little cubesats equipped with robot arms and independent propulsion to launch attached to these spacecraft. It’s usually just a pin not coming out or a latch not locking in place.
That’s a great idea, Andrew. It seems like they just can’t quite accurately simulate the zero-G behavior of of large lightweight mechanisms in Earthbound test rigs!
Robot arms can snag too—the problem is the cold
There may be hope
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-robot-arm-flex-moon-frigid.html
The best thing is to have a Cassini type dish.
The restrictions of boosters have placed a premium on ultra-lightweight, compact space probes. That’s why we see probes with frail structures like JWST that would collapse under normal Earth gravity, and have complex origami-like unfolding strategies to allow them to fit in a fairing.
But if and when Starship goes into production, we should see more robust probes that devote more of their development cost to powerful scientific investigation and less to fitting the modest capabilities of their launchers!
Build spacecraft in space.
The testing is more realistic.
Our Galileo orbiter also failed to deploy its high gain antenna back in the 90s. Deja vu. The sky god Jupiter will not give up his secrets easily.
“Try it now”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d5wkwMQA2pE
It is premature to panic, though: As the article notes, ESA’s team has, literally, eight years to work out a solution (if one is to be had) before JUICE even reaches Jupiter. If all else fails, perhaps the heat of the Venus gravity assist may be used to advantage to shake it loose?
Worst case, RIME is a bust, and that would suck because it is one of the more important instruments JUICE has. But it is still just one of 11 main science instruments; and Europa Clipper will have the capability to pick up the subsurface radar mapping duties when it arrives around the Galilean moons around the same time.
Concerned, I had the same thought and it did impact the data Galileo was able to send back since it was able to send so little at a time. They made it work but never as well as it should have. I want to say the same thing happened to one of the asteroid missions a few years ago but I don’t remember which one.
If only there was a low-cost way to have an Astronaut handy in earth orbit to manually fix things like this before they do their final burn.
Or even better, assemble the probe in LEO and then send it once it passes checkout.