Assessing the habitability of Jupiter's moons: this is the main goal of Esa's new Juice (the acronym stands for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) space mission, with a strong Italian footprint. Of the 10 instruments aboard the probe, four, in fact, are Italian.

After launching from Esa's Kourou base in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 launcher, Juice will exploit the gravitational pull of Earth, the Moon and Venus by performing four planetary flybys and after an eight-year journey to travel 700 million kilometers it will reach Jupiter, the fifth planet in the solar system in order of distance from the Sun and the largest in the entire planetary system: it could contain Earth 1,300 times.

Here it will specifically study Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, the three icy moons with oceans that orbit Jupiter and will be examined for possible habitats for life.

Juice will begin its observations six months before entering orbit around Jupiter whose atmosphere and magnetosphere it will analyze. The Esa mission will end in 2035.

The Italian Space Agency, supported by the national scientific community, is contributing to the mission with three scientific instruments-Janus, Rime and 3GM plus a fourth, Majis, made through a bilateral agreement between Asi and the French space agency Cnes.

The entities and universities that make up the scientific teams for the four instruments with Italian participation are: Inaf - National Institute of Astrophysics (with offices in Rome, Teramo, Padua and Catania), University of Trento, Sapienza University of Rome, University of Roma Tre, D'Annunzio University of Pescara, Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK), University of Bologna, University of Tor Vergata Rome, Geosciences and Georisources Institute (IGG) of the CNR, Partenope University of Naples, Cisas - University of Padua, Milan Polytechnic University, University of Salento.