That’s what a journey to Jupiter that will last eight years is for
The Juice probe mission is no joke: by exploring space, we may find answers to our problems on Earth. Enrico Ferrone's intervention
We talked about it extensively last week, both with the impeccable reporting by Chiara Rossi and whoever is writing now . The Juice mission – Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – took off on April 14, with a day delay due to the impossible weather conditions in the skies of French Guiana, where the launch took place. Its destination is the circumnavigation of Jupiter, the fifth planet of the solar system. The biggest. And very far from Earth. It will take eight years to achieve it and another three to accomplish all the operations for which it was designed. It's not a joke. Indeed, it is science. His goal is to go as far as the three frozen moons: Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, the Medici satellites scrutinized by Galileo Galilei who with his investigative methodology changed the path of science: from observation to experimentation.
Let's continue the story, after listening to some of the program's top experts: Barbara Negri, head of human flight and scientific experimentation at the Italian Space Agency, Federico Tosi, INAF researcher and professor at Roma Tre and Alessandro Atzei of the science and robotics directorate of the European Space Agency, in a conversation moderated by Giorgio Pacifici, science manager of Rai Tg2.
ALL ABOUT THE JUICE PROBE
Juice was born back in 2007 as a great European performance, intended to unravel some fundamental questions about the origin of life, which emerged from long observation studies on the moons of Jupiter; the oceans of water in the liquid state resting on silicate seabeds – it has been scientifically revealed – can be a starting point for identifying primordial dates of the solar system, with answers, once decoded, which would be an opportunity to bring back the voice of the Old Man Continent with the analogous dignity of the great American research centers which from the first lunar explorations represent the synonym of human knowledge. These are important considerations, which must overcome any wishful thinking of that archaic nationalism which still grows worryingly in every region of European soil. Since its foundation in 1975, ESA has been playing a significant role in this process by uniting programmes, sharing industrial know-how and pooling the intellectual capacity of continental scientists, technicians and operators.
Juice is a probe weighing around six tons: a carriage four meters high and two meters wide, lifted like an awkward dragonfly by an Ariane V – with a mass of 770 tons – the penultimate example of Arianespace. Through a series of orbital passages to exploit the gravity of the Moon, Venus and then Jupiter, the space raft will adapt its path and speed to the gravitational attraction of the planets, flying at 11 km/sec to position itself first near the largest of the natural satellites and dimensionally even larger than the planet Mercury, with the characteristic of a molten iron core that supports convective movements capable of generating its own magnetic field. A star therefore with many interesting similarities to the Earth and therefore full of potential answers.
THE IMPORTANCE OF JUPITER FOR THE EARTH
What do these investigations mean? How much can a distant planet – on average – 890 million kilometers from the Earth be materially interested in? Does it make sense to invest money and resources in stocks that appear so distant, not only in terms of size but also in terms of interest?
As experts of the subject and as communicators we often come across these arguments and even at the risk of appearing trivial we have turned to those who spend their lives conceiving and carrying out these surveys to listen to their opinion.
Science is an uphill, expensive and full of commitment and personal sacrifice, destined however to make humanity leap forward. It is a magma composed of curiosity and introspection, governed by an interminable and irreplaceable sequence of steps taken by researchers, scientists and technicians but necessarily directed by a political orchestration, without which one remains outside the world or guides it. With the authority of knowledge but also with the proceeds of the patents resulting from the registered inventions. The common users of its derivatives, i.e. the space economy, must know this, but those who govern must be aware of it. What is the duty of any executive if he strictly respects the commitment made with those who have trusted him? Undoubtedly, after a careful choice of industrial policy, necessary before deciding the fate of every productive activity of a nation, there is an opportunity to place trained, honest and adequate people at the helm and along the entire chain of command of the entities representing the operational arms of a government.
Otherwise, any project, even if it is the best example of a legacy from past administrations, risks succumbing to the blows of indifference and incapacity.
And in the case of Juice, a large program in which at least 2,000 scientists and engineers have worked, Italy, which has seen the paternity of four of the ten instruments that operate in it – and even a little more – cannot afford to see the his progress and his will to be first among the first in a difficult race, not always full of successes, but certainly open as only the future can represent.
We write this, in the awareness that after listening to three of Juice's main protagonists, no one will ever be able to question the very high work done so far. But we are in a phase of change involving many top positions: that the government has the conscience of giving the best continuity to this job, like to many others in place, by positioning effective top management in those sectors that will see the change. Otherwise it will be shipwrecked and we have already missed too many appointments: aeronautics, chemistry, electronics. Let's not lose space too!
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/sonda-juice-viaggio-giove/ on Wed, 26 Apr 2023 05:53:58 +0000.