After nearly a month of effort, flight controllers in Germany have successfully freed a crucial radar antenna on the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft. The 52-foot (16-meter) antenna had been jammed since soon after the spacecraft’s launch in April, when a tiny pin prevented it from fully opening. Controllers attempted various methods to get the pin to move, including shaking and warming the spacecraft, but it was ultimately back-to-back jolts that did the trick. The radar antenna will now be able to peer deep beneath the icy crust of three Jupiter moons suspected of harboring underground oceans and possibly life: Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.
2023-05-14 16:30:04
Link from phys.org
