The European Space Agency are committing their resources over the next decade to the development of a billion euro project to explore the Jovian system and its distinct, exotic clutch of satellites. The mission, tentatively called JUICE for JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer, will venture to the giant world and study the large Galilean moons, diverse and stranger yet though the sample of alien worlds is rather limited for humans, to see what secrets might lie just beneath the surfaces of Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto.
ESA will be supporting many other missions and research-projects in the interim, like expanding the International Space Station and diving into the dynamics of the Sun, and this meanwhile is a long time, more than a decade projected out with a travel time of eight years. It
is rocket science and while I can only imagine the planning necessary to ensure a successful execution and timing (since with limited propulsion, the launch of space probes requires the coordination and cooperation of the gravity and alignment of the moons and planets for an extra tug and to reduce resistance), exploration at a pace that’s not propelled by threat or competition could become a bigger barrier to public interest than the complexities of the science. It is exciting and maybe the wait will be outpaced, boxed-in by advancing technologies
in media res, but it is oddly responsible and mature burden that astronomers take on, like thinking about retirement, and becomes an instant legacy at the moment it is launched—an artefact tunneling through space and time, like the lighthouse beacons from the stars themselves that speak of the escaping past but not of the present or the more classic rides at amusement parks. Like the waltz of the epicycles, I suppose science has its measured pace too and will reveal discoveries and hopeful inspire throughout.
