Already in April, Polish scientists and engineers will once again send their research instruments on a groundbreaking space mission. This time they will fly towards the moons of Jupiter as part of the European Space Agency’s flagship ESA JUICE mission. 

Three of the ten instruments have been realised thanks to the participation of Polish entities, most notably the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, which was behind the scientific part and designed the instrument prototypes and made the flight models, and the company Astronika, as the designer of the qualification and flight models. 

Sener Polska made the components included in the solar panels that power the probe. Measuring instruments and functional components for the JUICE mission were developed by scientific teams from a total of 16 European countries as well as the USA (NASA), Japan (JAXA) and Israel (ISA). The participation of scientists and engineers from Poland was crucial to the entire project, emphasises the Polish Space Agency.

The JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer) mission will investigate the physico-chemical characteristics of Jupiter’s satellites, including whether conditions for the origin and support of life could arise on the icy moons of the gas giants.