Juice radar shows lunar mapping success in Apollo Earthrise region

Written by Copernical Team Tuesday, 22 July 2025 03:46

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Paris, France (SPX) Jul 22, 2025

When ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) performed a lunar flyby in August 2024, its Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) captured its first radargram by listening to radio echoes bouncing off the Moon's surface. The data, tracing surface elevation with a vivid pink-to-yellow line against a dark purple backdrop, aligned closely with NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) elevation mod

Juice radar shows lunar mapping success in Apollo Earthrise region
by Erica Marchand
Paris, France (SPX) Jul 22, 2025

When ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) performed a lunar flyby in August 2024, its Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) captured its first radargram by listening to radio echoes bouncing off the Moon's surface. The data, tracing surface elevation with a vivid pink-to-yellow line against a dark purple backdrop, aligned closely with NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) elevation model.

This lunar pass was vital for evaluating Juice's full suite of ten instruments, but especially critical for RIME, which had shown susceptibility to electronic interference from other onboard systems. During an eight-minute solo window, all other instruments were shut down or quieted, allowing RIME to collect clean data.

Engineers used this opportunity to assess how interference was degrading RIME's performance and have since developed corrective algorithms. The result is a highly detailed elevation profile of the Moon that demonstrates the instrument's restored capability.

RIME's primary mission is to probe beneath the icy crusts of Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, revealing their hidden rocky interiors. Though the Moon lacks ice, the successful surface scan affirms the radar's readiness for its Jovian objectives.

Adding historical resonance, the new radar view maps the same lunar terrain captured in the famed Earthrise photograph taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders in 1968. The most prominent crater in the image, once called Pasteur T, has since been renamed Anders' Earthrise in honor of that iconic shot.

Juice's next maneuver will be a flyby of Venus next month. This gravity assist will propel the spacecraft onward toward Jupiter, though no instruments will be active due to Venus's high temperatures, which exceed the limits of Juice's cold-environment design.

+ Radargram of the Moon by RIME