THE spikes keep things quiet. Too much noise and the antenna pointing out the top couldn’t hear the signals it needs to peer through the frigid exteriors of Jupiter’s moons. This is a model of the Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) instrument. If all goes well, RIME will start studying Ganymede, Europa and Callisto in 2029 as part of the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission, also called Juice.
The scaled-down 1:18 model seen here sits in an anechoic chamber in the Netherlands for a test of a test: before Juice is launched in 2022, the full spacecraft will have to undergo similar checks to make sure we understand anything that might affect its performance in space.
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The real RIME antenna will be 16 metres long and use radar signals to penetrate 9 kilometres down, characterising the moons’ ice shells and maybe even reaching their underground oceans. These tiny worlds may be the best places in our solar system for life, so studying their frozen crusts and the hidden waters below may be key to our understanding of how life arises.
Photographer,
M. Cowan
ESA
