Juice's Earth flyby shifts course toward Jupiter

ESA's Juice spacecraft completed its September 28 Earth gravity assist, changing its route toward Jupiter. The European Space Agency said the encounter deflected the probe 20 degrees from its previous path and increased its velocity by 3.5 kilometres per second. Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics also reported the completed flyby on September 29.

Closest approach came at 11:45 UTC, when Juice passed 8,640 kilometres above the Indian Ocean, ESA said. Controllers had used only one small trajectory correction in the four weeks before the encounter, out of six opportunities reserved for the approach. ESA plans to keep tracking the spacecraft closely through October 10.

Juice's onboard cameras recorded the passage. An ESA image made with its monitoring camera shows Africa and Madagascar as the spacecraft moved away from Earth after closest approach. The image documents the encounter, while ESA's flight account is the source of the reported trajectory change.

The flyby also gave the mission a chance to calibrate science instruments near Earth. ESA said Juice spent several days crossing Earth's magnetotail, where instruments could measure magnetic fields and charged particles. The agency expects to release additional instrument images and spectra after the data have reached Earth and science teams have evaluated them.

The new course sets up a final Earth gravity assist planned for January 2029. ESA says that encounter is intended to put Juice on its final route to Jupiter, where it is due to arrive in 2031 and begin studying the planet and its icy moons. Those are future mission steps, not outcomes of this week's flyby.