Whether Ganymede' s oceans have a similar chemical endowment is one of the biggest questions about the moon, says Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist at the University of Leicester, and one of the scientists working on the mission.
After a few years of whizzing around Jupiter and its moons, in 2034 JUICE will enter orbit around Ganymede — which, being bigger than the planet Mercury, is actually the solar system's largest moon.
在围绕星及其星呼啸穿梭数年之后,2034 年 JUICE 将进入围绕轨道,而它比水星还大,是太阳系最大星。
The first is Titan, a monster satellite that's actually bigger than Mercury, not that much smaller than Mars, and second in moon size ranking only to Jupiter's moon Ganymede.
It will come to the system just 15 months after Clipper, and it'll even be doing a few flybys of Europa before settling into a tight orbit around Ganymede.
" Jupiter's biggest moon is Ganymede, not Callisto, " she said, pointing over Ron's shoulder at a line in his Astronomy essay, " and it's lo that's got the volcanoes."
The ESA took the opportunity to do a test run of Juice's instruments, which it will use to look for molecular signatures of habitability on the moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
In 1610, for example, Galileo used the first telescope to discover Jupiter's moons Io, Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede — now known as the Galilean Moons.
The current count is 95 confirmed moons for Jupiter, including the largest moon in our solar system, Ganymede, which is larger than the planet Mercury.