Daily Star’s area mission is ‘anticipated’ to search out aliens on Jupiter and alter the world
The Daily Star is set to change the course of humanity – by finding aliens. Boffins say they ‘expect’ to discover ET lurking in vast oceans beneath the icy crusts of Jupiter’s moons.
Our JUICE spacecraft is currently hurtling towards them at 30,000mph packed with scientific equipment that could finally answer the question that has forever perplexed mankind: “Are we alone?”
It is not due to get there until 2031. But Angela Dietz, the European Space Agency’s operations manager for JUICE – aka Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer – said it will be well worth the wait if the orbiter discovers extraterrestrials. She said: “I would expect to find some form of life. It could be simple life. It may be like bacteria or other simple life forms. But this would be fantastic. We are really on the frontier of new knowledge. It’s incredibly exciting.”
Star man Jerry Lawton with our JUICE spacecraft(Image: Tim Merry / Daily Star)
Angela said oceans on Jupiter’s moons Ganymede, Europa and Callisto – which JUICE is due to spend five years exploring – are the most likely destinations in the Solar System where life could exist.
Ganymede’s contain six times the amount of water on Earth. Each moon is covered by a near-two mile deep crust of ice which would protect inhabitants from meteorite strikes.
While the high level of radiation from Jupiter could produce mutations required for evolution.
“We have water, which is important, but then there are also a lot of other elements that life has as we know it on Earth,” Angela said.
The JUICE mission control centre(Image: Tim Merry / Daily Star)
“That’s why we want to go there and investigate because this makes a place where life could have developed.
“These are the places in the Solar System where there is the biggest possibility of life emerging.”
The Daily Star was invited to join the JUICE mission ahead of its 2023 lift off and travelled to Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in South America to see the spacecraft being prepared.
We were even granted access to the sacred ‘clean room’ where the final touches were made to the capsule ahead of its launch.
Some of its 10 hi-tech scientific devices capable of detecting life were made in the UK.
Its magnetometer was built by boffins at Imperial College, London, to measure magnetic fields.
A team from the University of Leicester helped make the probe radiation-proof to enable it to operate in deep space.
ESA Juice project manager Giuseppe Sarri(Image: Tim Merry / Daily Star)
An Open University team tested and calibrated imaging sensors for its camera system.
While University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory provided detectors and Aberystwyth University contributed to anti-radiation technology.
We watched along with the rest of the world as the spacecraft blasted off on its journey to Jupiter on top of an Ariane 5 rocket on April 23.
That did not have enough power alone to propel the 9ft-square, six-tonne capsule 483 million miles to its destination.
Instead experts have to send it five times around the Sun in a complex ‘energy exchange’ to generate enough speed to fire it off into deep space like a sling shot.
A logo which was designed by Yarina, a Ukrainian schoolgirl, which is on the rocket(Image: Tim Merry / Daily Star)
It has already successfully completed flybys of the Earth, Moon and Venus building up velocity from gravitational pulls.
JUICE will fly by the Earth twice more – in 2028 and 2029 – before whizzing off to its final destination.
The orbiter will then spend four years on a ‘complex tour’ of Jupiter and its moons – which Angela said is ‘a bit like a small Solar System in itself’ – performing 35 flybys before orbiting Ganymede for a year.
It will come within 500 yards of the surface sending back data, photos and videos which will take 53 minutes to reach Earth.
If that reveals alien life the space agency plans to send another craft with a lander to drill through the icy crust so mankind can formally say ‘hello’.
The mission is on schedule and has already proved capable of finding aliens by ruling there were none on passing comet 3I/ATLAS.
By chance JUICE was the closest spaceship to the interstellar object which blasted past Earth last year and some experts claimed was an alien probe.
Space agency chiefs trained JUICE’s hi-tech gear on it and proved it was an ET-free comet.
Scientists were ‘very happy and very excited’, Angela said, because it proved the spacecraft’s instrumentation was working and may one day detect life in space.
But if ET is lurking on Jupiter it could be generations before mankind can travel there for a one-to-one.
Angela added: “Jupiter is not a good place to go because it has very high radiation. Within minutes a human would die.
“It’s really very severe and we do not have the technology to cope with anything like it.
“JUICE has shielding from radiation for the electronics but even this would not protect humans. It would be a one-way mission. People would die very quickly.
“Maybe it’s something for the future. But you don’t need to send somebody. JUICE can do it.”
