Israel To Squeeze Measurement Technology Into JUICE Spacecraft Missions To Jupiter

This article was first published by The Times of Israel and was re-posted with permission.

Is there life “out there?” If there is, it may be on one of the four largest moons orbiting Jupiter – and an Israeli-developed atomic clock will ferret out signals of that life, should there be any.

The technology-based device in question was developed by Israeli firm AccuBeat, working with Weizmann Institute’s Dr. Yohai Kaspi, Israel’s lead investigator, in collaboration with the University of Rome, on the 3GM (Gravity & Geophysics of Jupiter and Galilean Moons) Project, a part of the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission.

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JUICE, the JUpiter ICy satellite Explorer, is likely to lift off sometime at the beginning of the next decade, and by 2030 should reach Jupiter, where it will take measurements of the biggest planet in the solar system, along with data from the biggest of Jupiter’s 67 known moons – Io, Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto, known as the Galilean moons (for Galileo, who discovered them with his telescope).

JUICE Spacecraft Illustration. Photo by European Space Agency (ESA)

Astronomers for centuries have been especially interested in the Galilean moons, because of their topography, geology, size, orbit, and other factors. Most interesting is the likelihood, many scientists believe, that at least three of the four moons harbor underground oceans.

Where there is water, life may – or perhaps is even likely to – follow. Among JUICE’s missions will be to determine once and for all if there is water under the surface of these worlds. And the 3GM project, which Israel is participating in, is the key to making that determination. The Israeli contribution to the project is an atomic clock-based device that will measure tiny vacillations in a radio beam provided by the Italian team.

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During the approximately two and a half years that JUICE orbits Jupiter, the 3GM team will investigate the planet’s atmosphere by intercepting radio waves traveling through its gas atmosphere, timing them and measuring the angle at which the waves are deflected. This will enable them to decipher exactly which gasses make up Jupiter’s atmosphere.

But on flybys of three of the planet’s moons – Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – the 3GM instruments will help search for tides, which, if water exists under the moons’ surfaces, are likely to be present. Scientists have measured fluctuations in the gravity of the moons, suggesting that Jupiter is exerting a magnetic pull on them. By measuring those variations in gravity, the researchers hope to learn how large these oceans are, what they are made of, and even whether their conditions might harbor life.

Jupiter and one of its moons. Photo by European Space Agency (ESA)

To do that, the team has adopted AccuBeat’s atomic clock technology to build the world’s most accurate ever Ultra Stable Quartz Oscillator (USO). Oscillators, of course, can be used to measure fluctuations in radio waves, and the USO will measure variations in a radio wave beamed by the Italian team at the moons’ surfaces. Variations in that wave will indicate that something is “moving” on the surfaces – or below them.

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Photos: European Space Agency (ESA)