Notes for editors:
The plaque features imagery of Galileo Galilei's first observations of Jupiter and its moons from a copy of the Sidereus Nuncius hosted in the library of the Astronomical and Copernican Museum, at the headquarters of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in Rome, Italy. The copy is one of the first 550 ever printed in 1610 in Venice.

Images of the plaque unveiling and spacecraft as seen at Airbus Toulouse today are available via ESA’s image library

A new selection of animations depicting Juice’s Solar System flybys and flybys in the jovian system are available via ESA’s video library

A ‘Space Juice’ competition is currently open, inviting participants to create a Juice mission themed drink! See www.esa.int/spacejuice for details – contest closes 31 January.

For more information, please contact:
ESA Media Relations

About Juice

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. It will make detailed observations of gas giant Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. This ambitious mission will characterise these moons with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.

Juice launches on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou in April 2023. It has an eight year cruise with flybys of Earth and Venus to slingshot it to Jupiter. It will make 35 flybys of the three large moons while orbiting Jupiter, before changing orbits to Ganymede.

Juice is a mission under ESA leadership with contributions from NASA, JAXA and the Israeli Space Agency. It is the first Large-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme.