Move over Mars. The search for extra-terrestrial life in our solar system is this week fixed squarely on Jupiter as the European Space Agency (ESA) gets set to send its Juice spacecraft on an ambitious mission to inspect the frozen oceans of three of the planet’s moons.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – which blasts off on Thursday from French Guiana and won’t reach its destination until the year 2031 – is suped up with the most powerful remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments ever transported to the outer solar system.
