The king of the planets is at its most glorious this month, shining brilliantly high in the south all night long. On 6 December, Jupiter is at its closest to the Earth – 612 million km away – while the next day it’s directly opposite the Sun in our skies. It will fly past Europa and Jupiter’s outer moon Callisto, …
A rocket carrying the robotic explorer Juice takes off from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana on Friday, beginning its journey to explore Jupiter and three of its ice-encrusted moons. When contact finally was confirmed close to an hour into the flight, the European Space Agency’s Mission Control in Germany declared: “The spacecraft is alive!” It will take the robotic explorer, …
