JUICE Must Delay Visiting Jupiter Due To Bad Weather

JAKARTA - The launch of the European Space Agency's (ESA) JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission, which will visit the Moon on Planet Jupiter, has been postponed for 24 hours due to weather conditions.

This event occurred just minutes before the planned launch at 12.15 p.m. GMT from the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, due to the threat of lightning in the sky.

"(With only a few minutes remaining) a huge cloud mass is approaching and we are completely unable to proceed with the launch due to the risk of lightning," said Stephane Israel, CEO of the French company Arianespace that provided the Ariane 5 rocket.

ESA said the next launch will take place at 12.14 p.m. GMT or 19.14 p.m. Western Indonesian Time (WIB) today, weather permitting.

"The important thing is that the launcher and JUICE are in a stable configuration and fully secure. We will be back tomorrow morning," said Israel.

The JUICE launch window lasts only one second, this is due to the need to conserve fuel on the way to Jupiter.

The spacecraft must achieve a specific trajectory for this journey, which will involve gravitationally assisted flyovers of several planets including Earth and Venus to provide boosts to JUICE along the way.

Previously it was reported, the JUICE mission, which will visit Jupiter's three largest moons, namely Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, aims to study whether these moons are potentially habitable because they are thought to accommodate oceans of liquid water under a thick crust of ice.

The spacecraft will be launched using an Ariane 5 rocket and spend about eight years traveling to Jupiter's system before arriving on the planet in July 2031, Digital Trends reports.

To watch today's launch, ESA streamed it via its official YouTube channel. Please click here.