Though it's still seven years from reaching Jupiter, the JUICE mission is proceeding apace — and a recent test-run simulated the mission's spacecraft flying by the Jovian icy moon, Callisto.
Having blasted off from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana a year ago, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, known as JUICE for short, is still in the inner solar system, getting ready for a series of gravity assists that will throw it onto a trajectory allowing it to rendezvous with Jupiter in 2031. Its first port of call will be the giant planet's outermost Galilean moon, Callisto. This will mark the first of 35 planned flybys of the gas planet's moons Callisto, Ganymede and Europa, before the spacecraft settles into orbit around Ganymede.
